Issue : People : Love

Love is a science fiction movie. In it a dude gets picked to live in a space station orbiting earth. He gets by alright up there for a while with a computer that allows him to keep in contact with his people. But then it goes away.

He passes the time by working out, studying, and listening to messages he had saved before he lost comms. But as time passes, he starts to get lonely. He stops shaving, starts talking to himself, obsessing over all the bad stuff he had seen, and all the other stuff that happens when someone loses contact with other people.

He spends most days staring out the porthole at earth, wondering what the hell is going on. One day he sees an explosion on a landmass, then another, then another. The chain reaction went really fast, like B-R-A-A-A-A-P! And then nothing again. A little while later comms are restored for a bit, with only enough time for his buddy from Houston to tell him that things down on earth got fubar, and he has to figure out a way to get by until they can come pick him up.

A long time passes and he is just done, he starts to accept that everyone down there is gone, and he is the only human being left. The only thing keeping him going is that he doesn't know for sure, his lady could still be down there, his friends, his family. So one day he just says fuck it, he is going home.

He puts on his space suit and goes outside, intending to float into the Earths atmosphere. His plan is popping off, when all of the sudden a group of non humans discover him out there alone. Love ends with him learning they set up a satellite of their own that orbits earth, explaining the brief life of a race of people that lived there once.

Oh, and here are some game industry jobs for old lang zine.

The Protoculture Mixtape V.17

Issue : Games : Danny Chen

Hey so what happened to Danny Chen? They say he was found dead in the guard tower, looked as if he offed himself with his issued piece. Doesn't sound like Danny. I bet it was those fuckers in his company. They were always giving him shit over nothing, chink this and shit bag that. I heard they pulled rack ops on him over that water heater AFI.

Dragged him through the barracks stripped, he was screaming, no one said a thing. Wonder whats going on over there Army side, used to be about different stuff. Used to be anyone you share a foxhole with was made, along with anyone behind that flag. That used to be the oath, to protect people. If what they say is true, the army let the enemy drag a man through their own house in the middle of the night, and no one said a thing. Can't be true, they are better than that.

Not for nothing, but I also heard everyone watched two chicks kiss over at Little Creek. They said PO2 Gaeta hopped off the boat the moment it anchored and made out with her lady, PO3 Snell for homecoming honors. That's awesome, when did the USS Oak Hill get back in?

I still can't figure out what happened to Danny Chen. Been looking around the tubes, no one is saying anything, seems weird. A lot of military types have been committing suicide or getting friendly fired by their fellow soldiers and sailors lately, more have been dying like that than in combat these days, I hear. Danny's parents are asking about him, but they have had about as much luck as I have. Still, doesn't sound like Danny to off himself, something must be going on.

The Protoculture Mixtape V.16

Issue : People : Spazzzin

I long time ago I hated my high school math teacher and he hated me back. It didn't start out like that though, we just kind of fell into it. It was tough to figure out what I was supposed to be doing there. I would get dropped off and follow these instructions written on pieces of paper that said PE, or ECON, and I walk to the back of the class and sit down.

I spent the rest of class doodling or writing little stories or whatever. I couldn't hear anything back there, which was fine, because everything the teacher said came directly from a book that I would read on my own time, and I wouldn't have been able to hear anything if I tried, because the rest of the class spent their idle time chatting it up.

My math teacher was an old adjunct, all I remember about him is that he wore Birkenstocks with fuzzy wool grey socks. I only remember because the class gave him all of the shit over it. They had a hard time understanding the fashion choice, so they would always ask him things in the form of a question. Stuff like, "What do you do when it rains?" Or, "Who dressed you?" But he didn't seem to mind much I guess, because he showed up everyday wearing the same thing.

During his lectures he would randomly ask kids to come up and solve a problem on the dry erase board, I spent everyday in fear of going up there. In his class I wouldn't doodle or write, I followed the lecture and did the problems, because I knew it was only a matter of time till my name was called. The math wasn't the problem, it was the walk up, and then the writing of the problem on the board.

Not many people in high school liked me, don't really know why, just didn't. Which was an easy fix, show up, sit in back, stay low and quiet, speaking only to people I trust until the final bell rings, then get out. But unfortunately I shared classes with the same students that didn't like me, and the teacher asking me to come up front was putting me directly into their line of fire.

This situation would always cause panic attacks in me, as in I would just sit in front of the dry erase board frozen. I could hear the laughs behind me, so I couldn't turn around, I could feel the teachers impatience with me, so I couldn't speak. The seconds feeling like hours, the shaking, the stillness, all of those things.

My high school math teacher hated me because I spazzed on him one day. I was in front of the class staring at the board, and to my left I hear "You can't divide twelve and three?" It was him. Everything went from nothing to something, I got so mad. I had never said a thing about his Birkenstocks, I had never made a sound in his class, but in my mind here he was making fun of me with them, I felt betrayed.

So I wheel around and in the span of a second I was nose to nose with him. I was cursing and threatening and carrying on, I wanted him to hit me. My line of reasoning at the time was "Fuck him, fuck them, fuck everything, lets go." He called security, they came and subdued me, then dragged me to the principals office. I was at home suspended within the hour. The math teacher and I never shared another word the rest of the semester, and I never had to go up to the dry erase board again.

The Protoculture Mixtape V.15

Issue : Games : Grand Theft Auto

Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr, better known as Snoop Dogg, is an American rapper, singer, record producer, actor, auto tune singer, and father. Snoop Dogg has been famous for a long time now but got his first break rapping with another rapper named Dr. Dre on a song called "Deep Cover," written for the soundtrack to a film of the same name. The film is about a uniformed policeman recruited by a drug enforcement agent to infiltrate a drug smuggling organization.

In the song Snoop says:

/Creep with me as I crawl through the hood,
/Maniac, lunatic, call 'em Snoop Eastwood
/Kickin dust as I bust fuck peace
/And, the mothafuckin drug police
/You already know I gives a fuck about a cop
/So why in the fuck would you think that it would stop
/Plot, yeah, that's what we's about to do
/Take your ass on a mission with the boys in blue
/Dre, (whatup, Snoop) yo I got the feelin
/Tonight's the night like Betty White, and I'm chillin
/Killin, feelin, no remorse, yeah
/So lets go straight to the motherfuckin' source
/And see what we can find
/Crooked ass cops that be gettin niggaz a gang of times
/And now they wanna make a deal with me
/Scoop me up and put me on they team and chill with me
/And make my pockets bigger
/They want to meet with me tonight at 7:00, so whassup nigger?
/What you wanna do? (What you wanna do?)
/I got the gauge, a uzi and the mothafuckin 22
/so if you wanna blast, nigga we can buck 'em

/If we stick 'em then we stuck 'em so fuck 'em!"

The movie did not do too well, but the song was a breakthrough hit for both Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. Parents got mad when they heard the song. They argued that Snoop Dog was advocating the murder of police, and believed that kids would listen to the Snoop and want to kill policemen as well.

A song by Big Pun, featuring Fat Joe, called "Twinz (Deep Cover '98)", from his album Capital Punishment, featured the same beat and different lyrics. It is featured in the video games Saints Row 2, True Crime: New York City, and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, on the rap radio station The Liberty Jam.

The Protoculture Mixtape V.14