Nerding Day: The Book of Lives🌭

I want enlightenment, but I don’t want to think about stuff or get rid of my stuff or be nicer to anyone or read about dead monks or embrace suffering or stop drinking or fund less famine or date less or lose more than a suggested donation. Can anyone help, preferably quickly and on my phone?

YouTube’s a start. They’ve thrown away countless chances, so they must be pretty detached. Hopefully my feed takes a break from eugenics vlogs, and tosses in some spiritual awakening.

Stay frosty, we’re not out of the woods yet. GeneTubers spam AI art too. The Tool cover look’s a good sign, but the MaxxiaCast may be another truck stop on the sage’s path.

Now I’m worried. Games offer artful, mind-expanding fun. Far too life-attaching. You might as well have kids or a dream. Also: our hosts sound like a Borg divorce.

Ah, I see why this sounds robotic. It is. Behold: an AI podcast advertising a New Age self-help book. Five layers of me not giving a shit in one sentence. Elite detachment. We’ve found the real deal.

Our AI hosts, Nameless and Also Nameless, love the shit out of The Book of Lives. But in a messy, non-specific way. You lose track of what they’re praising or why. I’d swipe at gaming podcasts here, but The Maxxiacast misses that standard. The uploader, Rutibex, is marvelously detached from effort.

Though Rutibex might disagree. His “Anti-Anti-AI Rant” indulges worldly ego. And tears. First, the cover art shows off his craft:

Then, he flaunts the power of an LLM-enhanced mind:

Ah, swastika-free game drama. Breathe in the nostalgia.

I’d summarize Rutibex’s non-career here if I were immortal. Sadly, I have countless fuckups to fix before rebirth. Suffice to say, he likes robots and half-plagiarizing rpgs. This plays poorly in game design clubs, where they expect you to design games.

He goes on for a while.

Like many martyrs, Rutibex defies mortal thrones. The air of a master’s unmistakable—he lacks all fear of embarrassing himself to death. If anyone can teach us to stop giving a shit and lie flat, it’s Rutibex.

Phenomenal. Rutibex has to laze out because of capitalism. A difficult technique: I told a date capitalism made me late, and now I’m spending Friday with The Book of Lives. I’ve had better luck using it at work, where my boss helped me put all my stuff in a box. I bet it’ll fly even better in court.

Our guru can deny his powers all day—he’s our man. I’m ready for A.I.-enhanced apathy. Let’s play the Pamphlet of Reincarnation, or whatever it’s called. I’m not checking, that’s off-tone.

Here’s the cover:

Perfect for your dorm, if you’ve detached from taste. It says “I’ve heard of drugs, but can’t find parties with them.” While an untrained soul would press “Retry,” Rutibex takes what the universe gives. The byline says Michael, but that might be Grok mangling “Dave” or “Hack.” Though without swastikas, it’s probably Midjourney.

Personally, I prefer his pen name. Michael’s one of those tryhard C-suite angels that worked all the time. Unrelatable, really. Rutibex freely redefines sloth with MadLibs splat books. And when he got tired of checking class tables, The Book of Lives.

Time to play.

Ah, apologies. Time for schtick. Meet Malidrex, a name straight from the highs and lows of fantasy. The enlightened don’t write highs.

Malidrex is Rutibex’s…Rutibex. Rutibex writes himself in as an invincible wizard, across multiple games. When Midjourney finally warns users against this, we’ve reached the singularity. Until then, Malidrex has opinionated shoes. Classic, like crazy ex-girlfriends crossing the airport.

We’ve detached from comedy. A skeptic might compare the mirror to Midjourney. I prefer trust. There’s no meaning here beyond the ashes of webcomic comedy, and this is the non-template part of the book. This corpse manzai’s more human than anything that follows. Raw wisdom from our master’s forehead. Bask in it.

Now we can play.

I’d question cribbing Brahmin for DriveThruRPG chum, but I’m on the powergaming honor roll. My brain’s locked on shortcuts to God’s right hand. Once I’m there, I’ll pile on save-or-die spells. I’m not kidding. When I joined the team, I promised to breach hell. Good job, me. The new goal’s to hug God.

I’m not being crass for kicks, I just think God has nice shoes. Where do you think he got them? Don’t look so nervous, it’s not like he’s listening.

Rock me, Rutibex.

This is unbelievably fucking stupendous! I’m a rock. Look at all that rock copy Rutibex peeled from an LLM! I’d find it moving, if I weren’t a rock. An immortal, satisfied entity. Are we already enlightened? The rest of The Book of Lives might be pointless. More pointless, I mean.

Now what?

Elegant: only three pages of charts. Unless you count the charts attached to each life. Then we’ve got two hundred pages of charts. Rutibex shed the brain cells needed to overcomplicate this. Overcomplicate this more. I respect muddling potential themes with both roleplay choices and rolling. Otherwise, he might’ve accidentally said something about life.

It’s simple: first we make a moral choice. Which doesn’t matter much, since we roll our karma change. Which doesn’t matter much, because we roll to determine our next life. In short: I’ll handle the anti-gameplay off the page. You enjoy math-free enlightenment.

Rolling. I’d grab a real d10 from the pile, but effort feels off-message.

Woo!

Dicks.

Punishment Level? What, because I made shitty gravel? Someone skinned their knees, and now I’m on a debt spiral to hell? See why I want to chat with the boss?

Oh, I’m after colonial enlightenment. The formatting’s inconsistent, but that comes with the territory. Precious, precious territory. I’ll hit more hospitals next round.

I don’t spend much time in casinos.

A wild boar, right between “street dog” and “mosquito.” No picture this time, since generative tokens cost money, and greed pollutes the soul. Or Rutibex forgot. Anyway, it’s worse to be a freer, stronger, less starving animal than a street dog. When I know why, I’ll be the master.

We’ve stumbled into a heartwarming children’s feature. Let’s get this proxy family going before award season.

I think the robot understands karma. I’m less sure about Rutibex.

For once, I’m not dicking around. My luck’s just like this. I’m a former clumsy boar. Or FDA chair.

You can’t fool me twice. It’s lunch time. I’m just following my nature, like…

…a Predator at a paintball game. Let’s eat the bird. If it deserved better, it would’ve rolled better.

A feature the robot broke: some choices cause a flat karma shift, followed by random nonsense rolls. This makes more sense, feels more like a game, and could fit the whole book with minimal effort. Instead, Rutibex reflects on time. We are lucky to bask in his light.

Though I might be guilty of AI-phobia. This oversight could be all human.

COME ON. I’m holding the bag for the whole forest? Soldier ants have eaten campers since I was a rock.

Enlightenment’s starting to piss me off. Here’s our new reincarnation:

Jack-fucking nothing.

Our Karma Score’s at “Nuclear Fallout,” which sounds pretty funny. Sadly, it doesn’t exist in the book. The machine forgot. Rutibex’s LLM-enhanced creativity transcends print: we’re contemplating the void, before even reaching The Void on page 315.

So it goes. This is the worst Fallout news since…

…my comic pitch fell through. But boy, wouldn’t filing off all the serial numbers be fun? I’d take that deal at VertImageHorsePress.

Rolling on.

Did I say bad at games? I mispronounced “living god.” In text, it happens. Dice melt to my touch in awe and lust. Let’s claim my new trophy fast, in case I Roman Cancel into enlightenment too early.

What an adorable lifetime of torment! Shame about Nurgle’s Rot. We sound like patient zero of something you catch in Vegas. Or the robot output for “SICK BAT ENGLISH NOPORN.” The art’s off-tone for a plague bat, but a perfect mascot for my winning streak.

No gloating yet. We have to confirm it.

Suck my ass, cosmic povvos! I’m all the way back up to “Feral Cat.” If that sounds unfair, it’s because your soul’s poor.

Now that I’m on a roll, I won’t bore you with my ascent’s details. I’m building generational karma, cutting off my bat-children, and taking it with me. I’ll return in five lives, somewhere between “Archangel” and “Archangel with Six-Pack.” Then we can chat with God.

Fucking how?

Sure, I see the dice. 1, 4, 14, 1, 3. Those aren’t normal numbers. There’s even a hope spot in the middle, just to enhance the sting. That’s not fair. I came for enlightenment, not to learn all life is suffering.

For the record: the light side has wonky non-art too, with less poorism. High-karma life paths look like Christian Galactus, with titles like Healer of Worlds or Unfucker of Climates. While Rutibex published 200 entries, he didn’t write 200 prompts.

Also: 100 years? What’s in the city sewage, stem cells?

A slight error. Off to double-hell we go.

Christ.

Though I’m not sure we respawned. This sucks, but it’s the same situation. Another golden morning in BezosCube 4. Rutibot’s punishment ideas amount to vine, animal, and poor. It doesn’t help that “Punishment Levels” mean nothing. A fancy robot would use our Karma score, but the master’s broke.

I blame the web dice. Hypocrites don’t go far in America, and I’ve bullied techpriests for years. I’ll roll the natural way: a mass-produced plastic tool. As Gaia intended. Or Buddha, right. We’re appropriating Buddhism today.

Oh, bullshit. Baldy’s covering for the demiurge. Ruling class solidarity strikes again.

Whose darksynth album cover is this? How did starving lead to triple hell? Did I hallucinate a hate crime before the crows found me?

The abyss asks questions with no answer, and less meaning. Fitting. A void of your own self loathing sounds just like….

…writing with a robot. I overestimated Rutibex. I thought detachment from ego fueled his work. Instead, he rages against shadowbans. He’s rigidly, firmly attached. If there’s a spark of talent within, we’ll never find out. And neither will he.

Tough one. Odd that a despair loop came up while someone stuck zombie art to zombie copy in a zombie game for a living audience that hates him. Guess his phone’s creative like that. For my part, I’ll log off.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Jared MountainMan, a sentient machine from the 40k universe that spends eternities smashing LLMs to fuel his ships.