Day 61 of Antaran's Journal has been found on my desk under a pile of mobile phone bills.

Muddasheep's Daydream Part 8

Hello, nice to meet you. My balloon is Lightslategray.

I sometimes wonder why we don't have a balloon attached to our hands right after birth. A balloon that would be of the color the parents can choose, just like a name, but instead of a name. You wouldn't have a name like Michael Jordan or Ben Kingsley anymore, just Darkturquoise or Floralwhite. Your passport wouldn't have a name, no photo, no address - just 16 pages full of your color. You can pay with your balloon by holding it in front of Balloon Scanners and it automatically subtracts the paid money from your bank account. Touching other's balloons would be highly illegal (unless you're married or related). There would be a group of people whose balloons have burst, they live in the dark alleys, a tragic life with no identity. You can kill somebody by stinging his or her balloon, that's why there will be balloons made of cannabis material. Imagine Bill Gates' - or rather Gold's - golden balloon getting shot in front of a restaurant, the news channels blaring about the Assassination of Gold. Imagine suicide sects, standing on a hill with scissors, cutting off their balloons at the same time, seeing the mass of different colored balloons slowly rising up the sky. There will be laws for each country for the limited colors they can choose from, and ultimately there will be wars between several humans of different colors, just because their balloons are just not the same. It will be blasphemy to love somebody who has the same balloon color, it will be said that it brings misfortune and impotence. We could dispose of airbags- we have our balloons to save our heads in accidents. Actually, if we make bigger balloons we could get rid of all the means of transportations and just fly around hanging on our colored friends. There will be Balloon Stations should your balloon need a fresh amount of helium. Balloon Care facilities could offer a face lift for your balloon - your identity - for a large amount of money. Priests will tell stories about the Crucifixion of Saint Balloon, and scientists reveal studies of how the bursting of a black balloon caused the Big Bang (is that racist?). Muslim women won't cover their bodies anymore, only their balloons will wear burqas. A whole dedicated fashion trend will arise, producing clothes for everyone's balloons. You would be able to adopt forsaken balloons from the Balloon Shelter for your new born child. Pets will have small balloons as well. Actors will be cast by the look of their balloons. Porn will feature scenes of multiple balloons rubbing against each other. The graveyards will be full of balloons, bound to the gravestones of their owners who died before their balloons burst (those balloons can still be used for payment, so graveyards must invest in tighter security). And when your view in the stadium is blocked by thousands of balloons and you even think once that balloons are maybe actually obsolete - your balloon will magically burst.

Antaran has lived another day.

Day 59 of Antaran's Journal has been revealed.

Muddasheep's Daydream Part 7

Stop for a minute and carefully, consciously look around, look at the cars that evolved out of simple carriages drawn by horses, look at the pavement under your feet, spanning around the country like callus, watching all the people sitting inside their cars, mostly just following their everyday life, take the routes they are used to. There are hundreds driving the streets, flowing like blood in your veins, their destinations are mostly working places which they need to attend to earn colored metal and paper pieces which they can trade for food, water, and gas to drive more, to work more, to eat more, to drink more. To reproduce. Would you want to bring a child into this world? Would you decline were you offered to be born? Could you cope with it should you have a child that kills itself, or suffers hunger and pain in the third world war? Is it right to believe there will be a third world war, or will this kind of thinking just spawn it?

Some people need to look away from their mirrors and look up at the stars and realize we're the current generation, given the opportunities of certain level of technology, and not look at others in disgust, but with the feeling that we are sharing approximately fifty years with each other, we are living on this planet and we can change the course of this ship for the next passengers in the next century. Can we? Nature is defending itself, and yet we continue to force results of laziness and comfortable style of living upon it, treating it like a toy. And yet there are people who do not have the possibility of staying another ten minutes in the shower because the water feels nice on the skin. They can't waste any drop because every drop drying on the ground means one less fragment of hope. I feel ashamed writing about it, I feel ashamed reading about it in the news, where it tells of water shortages next to Britney Spear's drug addiction problems.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm already dead. In 53 years I will die of a heart attack, and before I die I will live my life again, second by second, dying again, repeating my life in my head, being stuck in a loop. Sometimes my heart reminds me of its fragility, either by beating too fast or too slow for short amounts of time. This body I direct through this life is a weak machine. You surely know the saying that if you're standing in front of a lot of people and you're nervous you have to picture the audience naked. I know a better trick. Simply imagine that the humans before you are being controlled by their souls, relying on society habits to better understand their lives. They aren't really looking at you. Eyes are just instruments for receiving light and telling brains to make something out of it. Why they look like they do is a mystery, but the longer you look at them the more deformed they appear. The mouth, a disgusting instrument to absorb food, the nose in the middle of the head, full of dirt and snot, skin that is full of little unevennesses, pimples and tiny hairs. Seen an attractive woman or man? Watch how they eat. Watch how they swallow, how they talk while eating, spitting. Imagine them puking, imagine them being forty years older, imagine them being rotten in their coffins. The closer you look the clearer it becomes.

The Draversi Tournament in PHQ has ended, and LordAsriel turns out to be our King of Draversi.

I've written another episode of my Quick Movie Reviews series, and added a review about the great game Dreamfall.

I've recently played twenty minutes of Lord of the Rings Online, which turned out to be World of Warcraft with a Tolkien skin. I also gave Vanguard a try, which - surprisingly - resembled World of Warcraft in a lot of aspects. Copying is a form of flattery, or in this case it's a sign of let's-do-what-we-know-works. I also installed Second Life, created a character, logged into a server and uninstalled it again.

After all, I think I'm done with MMORPGs. First of all, I don't need any virtual friends. I have my own community already. Second, I don't need Second Life to show off artistic skills, I have my websites. The same reason I believe MySpace is completely unnecessary for me - I already have websites with my content, why should I bother creating another website just because people on MySpace only surf around MySpace? I have set up a simple MySpace page and yet I still hear complaints and/or suggestions to spice it up with drawings or some such, because "it's like a business card".

Third, MMORPGs are designed to take long. You don't get instant entertainment value for your buck, you get it after running ten minutes from point A to point B, or after killing X of creature type Y. Whereas would you be playing, say, Dreamfall, you would receive constant entertainment. No struggle or unnecessary wasting of time involved.

And why are there still so many MMORPGs coming out? With WoW and Second Life taking over most potential gamers, what's left of the market for companies to decide and build a new world? Why does Sony think Home will work when there are things like Second Life and even smaller scale social platforms like Gaia Online already around? Where are the people to fill all those places?