Hello! I'm Tom. I'm a game designer, writer, and programmer on Gunpoint, Heat Signature, and Tactical Breach Wizards. Here's some more info on all the games I've worked on, here are the videos I make on YouTube, and here are two short stories I wrote for the Machine of Death collections.
By me. Uses Adaptive Images by Matt Wilcox.
I’m trying to talk to someone, I forget who, and the music is just so ridiculously loud that I can’t even hear my own voice. I indicate non-verbally that I’m going to turn off the MP3 player – which I think is theirs – but the thing won’t shut down. It’s a Sansa, like mine, and no matter how long I hold the ‘off’ button it just goes through different shutting down procedures without ever stopping. The music is pounding, unrelentingly repetitive – a few deafening bars and then the vocalist sings, “I’m tired of singing,” – repeated ad nauseam.
Eventually I just tug the wire from the player, and it still doesn’t stop. It’s so loud I feel like my head is bleeding – that the song itself is about the singer being tired of singing seems like a sick joke. “I’m tired of singing.”
I burst into the lounge, where my dad is explaining how a DivX player works to someone, and I ask if this is where the music is coming from. “I’m tired of singing.” My dad doesn’t know, so I borrow a likely-looking remote from him and try everything: volume down, mute, off. Nothing works. “I’m tired of singing.” By this stage the house is full of people, wearing chicken suits, walking slowly around its corridors and stopping every time the song gets to that unbearable “I’m tired of singing” line, whereupon their fake chicken heads flip back so they can sing it unmuffled. “I’m tired of singing.” I wish they wouldn’t. But most of all, I wish this fucking song would stop singing this fucking line again and again every five seconds for two fucking hours. “I’m tired of singing.” Shut up.
Finally I find the source. “I’m tired of singing.” I’m lying down, “I’m tired of singing,” I’m not sure where, “I’m tired of singing,” and there’s a single huge black speaker in front of me, “I’m tired of singing,” volume knob clearly visible. “I’m tired of singing.” I’m paralysed. “I’m tired of singing.” I know this knob will work, “I’m tired of singing,” that I can finally shut this unbearable “I’m tired of singing” twat up, “I’m tired of singing,” but I can’t move. “I’m tired of singing.”
“I’m tired of singing.”
“I’m tired of singing.”
“I’m tired of singing.”
“I’m tired of singing.” Finally I feel my arm start to shift, “I’m tired of singing.” I discover I’m naked, “I’m tired of singing,” but at this stage I don’t care – I can shut this thing up. “I’m tired of singing.” I manage to stagger to my feet and make it to the speaker, and twist the volume knob down for what feels like minutes.
It’s stopped. I see now that the speaker is beneath a monitor, behind a mouse and keyboard, and the track was playing through Winamp. I permanently delete it from the hard drive.
I look at the time – 8.30. I’ve slept through ninety minutes of music at this volume. It wasn’t all “I’m tired of singing” – a song called Running Out by Mates of State, not a single fucking bar of which I ever want to hear again as long as I live – that just happened to be the one that finally woke me up. I guess that means it was playing throughout the final couple of minutes of sleep where my dreams evidently take place.
There’s got to be a better way to wake up than this.