This is, quoted, a moron and my response to him:
Well the reality is most criminals are drugged out/ outta shape loosers.
#95 | Posted by cmbell73 at 2011-07-14 05:06 PM | Reply | Flag:
... wow, you really buy into ALL the bullshit they tell you in MMA "defense" courses, don't you?
Here's some reality for you:
1) Most criminals have been doing it for a long time and are very good at it.
2) Most criminals are keyed up instantly to commit violence if you do not comply. While you're quaking with fear/righteous fury waiting to "attack" when they take the goods, they're watching you, and will shut you down and then take your goods.
3) You are so unlikely to disarm a criminal who is pointing a gun at you that it's not even worth drilling. Even trying it is suicide. Those are for soldiers who KNOW they will die regardless, so why not try it? They are not for people who are being asked to hand over a wallet. Bravo, you can Google and find three or four cases, sometimes per YEAR, of people whom have succeeded. Now see how many fatalities you find wherein the stories include phrases like "while struggling for the gun" or "attempting to disarm".
4) If someone has the drop on you, your next step is to shut the fuck up, don't look them in the eyes, and give them whatever the fuck they want. Your wallet can be replaced, your life cannot.
5) You do not "attack". You never "attack". Ever. At any point. If you are "attacking", you are not in fear for your life, you think you're Dirty Harry and are waiting for a chance not to defend yourself, but to punish the "bad guy". First the District Attorney will rape you, then your cellmate will.
And finally, you're clearly the sort who pays "awareness" lip service but has not the first fucking clue what avoidance means. Your own words:
"I would never be a target for a criminal, because I would not appear to be an easy score. But lets say I slip up, and planets happen to line up in my favor, so some dirt bag crossed my path looking for some easy cash. I have to say that my training would turn his attempt into nightmare"
You are not interested in defending yourself, you are a violence geek. You anticipate the chance to one day unleash all your fury on some "dirtbag". You clearly do not live in a high-crime area, because you have not yet been mugged. How do I know this? Because I know persons on both sides of the law, and they all agree that swaggering douchebags are easy targets. You will move your head around and "observe" everything, trying to let "them" know that you're onto "them", like a peacock wanting to make sure the others know you're not an "easy score".
Do you want to know who the criminal element avoid the most? Those who look bored, annoyed, or tired. Those are the ones who are likely to be not worth the trouble. The swaggering douchebags? They've spent too much of their lives preparing for some fantasy version of violence that has no bearing on reality, and will be utterly shocked when they find themselves grasping for their intestines shortly after trying to "stand up" to the "dirtbag".
Oh and here's a bonus one for you: There is no "He already has my wallet, now I have nothing left to give but my life." If he wanted your life, he wouldn't wait until he had your stuff to kill you. You'd be swaggering along one day, certain you were not an "easy target", and suddenly find yourself bleeding out with a sucking chest wound while some "drugged out looser" takes your wallet out of your back pocket, along with whatever weapons you were carrying from the "opposite side" and leaves you to die.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Self Defense Primers, Knife
Here's a quick self-defense course on what actually works when someone draws a knife on you:
Step 1: Observe location of person with knife and how they are holding it.
Step 2: Run away.
Step 3: If you must engage, use a ranged weapon.
Now for some questions and answers:
Q: I was taught a knife disarm, won't I be fine?
A: Not likely. Those things are for last resort usage. "Last Resort" means "expect to die trying this, but hell why not?"
Q: My martial arts instructor says this is foolproof, are you saying he is wrong?
A: You'll find that people holding knives generally aren't fools.
Q: My instructor says he's used it for years.
A: I'm sure he has used it for years in demonstrations. Anyone who's actually faced a knife wielding opponent will laugh at these demonstrations
Q: What if I can't run away?
A: You can. One of the hardest things to do is to stop someone from escaping you when all you have is a melee weapon like, say, a knife
.
Q: Will running away from a knife wielding opponent make my penis shrink?
A: No, contrary to the knowledge disseminated on "Self Defense" forums, your penis will not shrink because you weren't a fucking idiot.
Q: I've tried to engage someone with a knife in unarmed combat. See? I got his knife. Why is my vision darkening around the edges?
A: I'm not a doctor so I can only speculate it's either you bleeding out from all the cuts you got wrestling with someone who has a sharp object, or it's from the concussion you got when you took his knife from him and he grabbed a nearby blunt object and smashed you over the head with it while you were congratulating yourself on your mad ninja skillz.
Q: What if I have a nightstick?
A: A nightstick is not a ranged weapon.
Q: What if I have a personal tazer?
A: A tazer is not a ranged weapon.
Q: what if I have a baseball bat?
A: A baseball bat is not a ranged weapon.
Q: What if I engage him anyway?
A: Congratulations. You have just bashed someone in the shoulder or upper arm with a baseball bat, and they have stabbed you in the stomach, probably two or three times because in the real world knife attacks are prison rushes, not arm out stabs. Was it worth the trade?
Q: What if I also have a knife, aren't they the ultimate close range weapon?
A: Then odds are both of you are going to die tonight. Hope you didn't have any family who loved you.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Avatar 2; this is actually here as a placeholder to link to from other places
"Avatar 2? Sounds like a pretty short movie. They come back and nuke the giant smurfs from orbit. Game over, man."
Not really. The earliest Earth could get the news and have a fleet return is 13 years. After the initial landing of security forces, the remaining ships are supplies and personnel, and are set up ona rotating basis. Essentially a ship spends 6 3/4 years in transit, one year in layover (on Earth/Pandora) and then goes back. It'll be nearly 7 years before they even notice one of their ships comes back off-schedule, and they'll still have dispatched all the return trips with nothing but supplies and smallarms.
The Na'vi and their human sympathizers are presently in control of a MASSIVE amount of hardware. After the defeat at hometree, other bases simply surrendered and were sent home on the ship. The Na'vi will then simply waylay the incoming ships, take the intended supplies, and send them back emptyhanded. Until that first one arrives on Earth to discuss their terms of trade. The supplementary material makes this clearer, but Avatar's Earth would go dark in 20 years without Unobtanium; finding Pandora in the first place literally saved Earth's ass.
At this point the humans have to decide "Is it worth what little resources we have left to mobilize a fleet against an entrenched people that have undoubtedly assimilated and (given all the scientists that stayed behind) likely improved on our tech by now, or will we play nice and trade for Unobtanium?" As it stands currently, Earth is STRIPPED of resources, and Unobtanium is about the only hope the human race has.
War with an uncertain outcome, or a trade agreement of some sort? My guess is the next movie in the series will be about 50 years after the first, mired in some events once Mother Earth gets back on her feet enough to decide if they want to attack or not.
Not really. The earliest Earth could get the news and have a fleet return is 13 years. After the initial landing of security forces, the remaining ships are supplies and personnel, and are set up ona rotating basis. Essentially a ship spends 6 3/4 years in transit, one year in layover (on Earth/Pandora) and then goes back. It'll be nearly 7 years before they even notice one of their ships comes back off-schedule, and they'll still have dispatched all the return trips with nothing but supplies and smallarms.
The Na'vi and their human sympathizers are presently in control of a MASSIVE amount of hardware. After the defeat at hometree, other bases simply surrendered and were sent home on the ship. The Na'vi will then simply waylay the incoming ships, take the intended supplies, and send them back emptyhanded. Until that first one arrives on Earth to discuss their terms of trade. The supplementary material makes this clearer, but Avatar's Earth would go dark in 20 years without Unobtanium; finding Pandora in the first place literally saved Earth's ass.
At this point the humans have to decide "Is it worth what little resources we have left to mobilize a fleet against an entrenched people that have undoubtedly assimilated and (given all the scientists that stayed behind) likely improved on our tech by now, or will we play nice and trade for Unobtanium?" As it stands currently, Earth is STRIPPED of resources, and Unobtanium is about the only hope the human race has.
War with an uncertain outcome, or a trade agreement of some sort? My guess is the next movie in the series will be about 50 years after the first, mired in some events once Mother Earth gets back on her feet enough to decide if they want to attack or not.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
To, you know who you are.
Your first comment did not get posted for two reasons.
1) I don't see where it says this site's a debate forum.
2) You instantly began whining about how your attitude problem is a "response" to oppressions.
You have never been "oppressed" by anyone. I'm a Shintoist and not afraid to talk about it to anyone who asks. I've never felt the need to "hide" anywhere, and I've sure never felt the need to compare my life to that of a homosexual's. If there was some.. light.. whiff of oppression from Christians I would have noticed it at some point. But there's none. And I think that's because when I speak to someone of another religion, I don't come into it with a chip on my shoulder. I approach in a light of tolerance and understanding, and my basic respect and human compassion has almost always led to a positive outcome.
There's some intolerant pricks, but they're in a stunning minority. From atheists (and, to a lesser extent, anyone who calls themselves a "witch")? A nonstop parade of spoiled little brats who aren't Atheists because it's the choice they made, because they hate Christians. A bunch of adolescents (of all physical ages) who walk around looking for reasons to be offended, a blur of faux-intellectuals believing they have something new to say. Your comment was marked as spam because that's what it is. More of the same.
I check my junk-mail a few weeks later, and skimming the first few lines has been humorous. When your weren't instantly given your say on someone else's site you progressively got your panties into a tighter and tighter wad until you started resorting to insults. Here's a tip: this is my blog. That means I'll say what I want to say, publish what I want to publish, and respond to or ignore who I want to. There are thousands of places on the internet where you can get together with the rest of the whiny suburban kids, grab each other's bottoms and talk about how "stupid" a bunch of decent caring people are.
Go to one of them, this isn't one of those places. Make sure to cry about how I'm "oppressing" you and beg people to hack the blog and harass me as some form of revenge for the horrible wrong I've done to you.
1) I don't see where it says this site's a debate forum.
2) You instantly began whining about how your attitude problem is a "response" to oppressions.
You have never been "oppressed" by anyone. I'm a Shintoist and not afraid to talk about it to anyone who asks. I've never felt the need to "hide" anywhere, and I've sure never felt the need to compare my life to that of a homosexual's. If there was some.. light.. whiff of oppression from Christians I would have noticed it at some point. But there's none. And I think that's because when I speak to someone of another religion, I don't come into it with a chip on my shoulder. I approach in a light of tolerance and understanding, and my basic respect and human compassion has almost always led to a positive outcome.
There's some intolerant pricks, but they're in a stunning minority. From atheists (and, to a lesser extent, anyone who calls themselves a "witch")? A nonstop parade of spoiled little brats who aren't Atheists because it's the choice they made, because they hate Christians. A bunch of adolescents (of all physical ages) who walk around looking for reasons to be offended, a blur of faux-intellectuals believing they have something new to say. Your comment was marked as spam because that's what it is. More of the same.
I check my junk-mail a few weeks later, and skimming the first few lines has been humorous. When your weren't instantly given your say on someone else's site you progressively got your panties into a tighter and tighter wad until you started resorting to insults. Here's a tip: this is my blog. That means I'll say what I want to say, publish what I want to publish, and respond to or ignore who I want to. There are thousands of places on the internet where you can get together with the rest of the whiny suburban kids, grab each other's bottoms and talk about how "stupid" a bunch of decent caring people are.
Go to one of them, this isn't one of those places. Make sure to cry about how I'm "oppressing" you and beg people to hack the blog and harass me as some form of revenge for the horrible wrong I've done to you.
Monday, May 9, 2011
More Atheists misbehaving
Had a friend today ask me to write his grievance at work. What was the subject? His boss occasionally leaves a bible on his desk. He brought up this article. Why do Americans "still" not like Atheists?
It's quite simple. When most Christians I've met find out someone is non-Christian, they sigh and go on with their day. They "know" they are "right", and pity the nonChristian, but they tend to respect and leave alone. Although they can make a nice hysterical mob, as do all other assorted isms. When an Atheist finds out someone has faith, they instantly think of that person as something unintelligent and possibly dangerous, like an ape. Atheists don't wait until they get in large groups to spray urine all over those who believe differently, they tend to be annoying on an individual basis.
The fact that this writer tries to compare their "plight" to that of Jews and blacks and yet doesn't understand why people find them annoying is funny. Get back to me when black people willingly choose their skin color or when atheists are being shipped to the gas chamber and then this can be said without being stunningly idiotic. He probably thinks he was very incisive and drew a wonderful comparison there. Intellectual hubris at it's finest.
Does every atheist act like a 5 year old when he finds out someone has faith? I hear not, but I haven't ever met one. Go to any message board for a fine microcosm. Most Christians, Jews, Muslims, Shintoists and so on might chime in but mostly don't care enough to make a big deal out of it. There's always a fine and large cast of Atheists willing to stand up and be a prick the instant someone even mentions God, or worse, even DARES to suggest they celebrate Christmas.
Protip: If you want America to like Atheists, it has to start with you. Quit being such a babydick about others having faith in something that is immeasurable and therefore cannot be proved or disproved. Quit leaping up to insult others while screaming "We ATHEISTS do it right, we say get along peacefully, live and let live, you stupid inbred sisterfucking redneck orangutan!"
It's quite simple. When most Christians I've met find out someone is non-Christian, they sigh and go on with their day. They "know" they are "right", and pity the nonChristian, but they tend to respect and leave alone. Although they can make a nice hysterical mob, as do all other assorted isms. When an Atheist finds out someone has faith, they instantly think of that person as something unintelligent and possibly dangerous, like an ape. Atheists don't wait until they get in large groups to spray urine all over those who believe differently, they tend to be annoying on an individual basis.
The fact that this writer tries to compare their "plight" to that of Jews and blacks and yet doesn't understand why people find them annoying is funny. Get back to me when black people willingly choose their skin color or when atheists are being shipped to the gas chamber and then this can be said without being stunningly idiotic. He probably thinks he was very incisive and drew a wonderful comparison there. Intellectual hubris at it's finest.
Does every atheist act like a 5 year old when he finds out someone has faith? I hear not, but I haven't ever met one. Go to any message board for a fine microcosm. Most Christians, Jews, Muslims, Shintoists and so on might chime in but mostly don't care enough to make a big deal out of it. There's always a fine and large cast of Atheists willing to stand up and be a prick the instant someone even mentions God, or worse, even DARES to suggest they celebrate Christmas.
Protip: If you want America to like Atheists, it has to start with you. Quit being such a babydick about others having faith in something that is immeasurable and therefore cannot be proved or disproved. Quit leaping up to insult others while screaming "We ATHEISTS do it right, we say get along peacefully, live and let live, you stupid inbred sisterfucking redneck orangutan!"
Sunday, April 24, 2011
........
The little black girl stopped.
She remembered so much, and thought for sure
that she was not a little girl anymore, but a full
grown panther. Yet she had big clumsy
kitten paws, and huge bright kitten eyes.
Behind her, kitties were playing, chasing each other and
wrestling in the warm sunshine.
It looked like so much fun, but in front of her, through
the clear stillness of the pond's water, she could see her mommy.
And Mommy wanted to cry.
She pawed at the water, trying to get at her, and when
that didn't work, she jumped into the shallow water. All that got her was wet and Mommy's image danced away in the ripples.
"Mommy!" she cried. "Is something wrong?" The little black girl turned
around.
A lady was standing at the edge of the pond, her eyes
sad but filled with love.
The little black girl sighed and walked out of the water.
"There's been a mistake," she said. "I'm not supposed to be here."
She looked back at the water.
It was starting to still again and her mommy's image was coming back.
"I'm just a baby. Mommy said it had to be a mistake. She said I wasn't
supposed to come here yet." The kind lady sighed and sat down on the grass.
The little black girl climbed into her lap.
It wasn't Mommy's lap, but it was almost as good.
When she started to pet her and scratch under her ear like she liked, she
started to purr. She hadn't wanted to, but she couldn't help it.
"I'm afraid there is no mistake. You are supposed to be
here and your mommy knows it deep down in her heart," the lady said.
The little black girl sighed and laid her head on the lady's leg.
"But she's so sad. It hurts me to see her like this. And Daddy cries so much."
"But they knew right from the beginning this would happen."
"That I was sick?"
That surprised the little black girl.
No one had ever said anything and she had listened when
they thought she was sleeping.
All she had heard them talk about was how cute she was, or
how fast she was or how well she was hunting.
"No, not that you were sick," the lady said.
"But you see, they chose tears."
"No, they didn't," the little black girl argued. Who would choose to cry?
The lady gently brushed the top of her head with a kiss.
It made her feel safe and loved and warm - but she still worried about her mommy.
"Let me tell you a story," the lady said.
The little black girl looked up and saw other animals gathering around.
Cats - Dusty and Mittens and Ariel and Miss Kitty and little Cleo and Robin.
Merlin and Toby and Iggy and Zachary. Napoleon and Kamatte and Obi.
Dogs too- Penny and Baby and Morgan and Spunky and Belle.
Even a lizard named Clyde and some rats named Inky and
Lady and a hamster named Ham Sandwich.
They all lay down near the kind lady and looked up at her, waiting.
She smiled at them and began:
A long long time ago, the Loving Ones went to the Angel
in Charge. They were lonesome and asked the Angel to help them.
The Angel took them to a wall of windows and let them
look out the first window at all sorts of things - dolls and stuffed
animals and cars and toys and sporting events. "Here are things
you can love," the Angel said. "They will keep you from being lonesome."
"Oh, thank you," the Loving Ones said. "These are just what we need."
"You have chosen Pleasure," the Angel told them.
But after a time the Loving Ones came back to the Angel in Charge.
"Things are okay to love," they said. "But they don't care that we love them."
The Angel in Charge led them over to the second window. It looked out at all sorts of wild animals. "Here are animals to love," he said. "They will know you love them."
So the Loving Ones hurried out to care for the wild
animals. "You have chosen Satisfaction," the Angel said.
Some of the Loving Ones worked at zoos and wild animal
preserves, some just had bird feeders in their yards, but after a time some
came back to the Angel in Charge.
"They know we love them," they told the Angel. "But they don't love us back. We want to be loved in return."
So the Angel took them to the third window and showed
them lots of people walking around, hurrying places.
"Here are people for you to love," the Angel told them.
So the Loving Ones hurried off to find other people to love.
"You have chosen Commitment," the Angel said.
But after a time a lot of Loving Ones came back to the
Angel in Charge.
"People were okay to love," they said. "But sometimes
they stopped loving us and left. They broke our hearts."
The Angel just shook his head. "I cannot help you," he said.
"You will have to be satisfied with the choices I gave you."
As the Loving Ones were leaving, someone saw a window
off to one side and hurried to look out.
Through it, they could see puppies and kittens and dogs
and cats and lizards and hamsters and ferrets.
The other Loving Ones hurried over. "What about these?" they asked.
But the Angel just tried to shoo them away.
"Those are Personal Empathy Trainers," he said.
"But there's a problem with their system operations."
"Would they know that we love them?" someone asked.
"Yes," the Angel said.
"Would they love us back?" another asked.
"Yes," the Angel said.
"Will they stop loving us?" someone else asked.
"No," the Angel admitted. "They will love you forever."
"Then these are what we want," the Loving Ones said.
But the Angel was very upset.
"You don't understand," he told them. "You will have to
feed these animals."
"That's all right," the Loving Ones said.
"You will have to clean up after them and take care of them forever."
"We don't care."
The Loving Ones did not listen. They went down to where
the Pets were and picked them up, seeing the love in their own hearts
reflected in the animals' eyes.
"They were not programmed right," the Angel said. "We can't offer a
warranty. We don't know how durable they are. Some of their systems
malfunction very quickly, others last a long time."
But the Loving Ones did not care.
They were holding the warm little bodies and finding
their hearts so filled
with love that they thought they would burst.
"We will take our chances," they said.
"You do not understand." The Angel tried one more time.
"They are so dependent on you that even the most well-made of them is
not designed to out live you. You are destined to suffer their loss."
The Loving Ones looked at the sweetness in their arms
and nodded.
"That is how it should be. It is a fair trade for the
love they offer."
The Angel just watched them all go, shaking his head.
"You have chosen Tears," he whispered.
"So it is," the kind lady told the kitties.
"And so each mommy and daddy knows. When they take a baby into their heart, they know that one day it will leave them and they will cry."
The little black girl sat up. "So why do they take us in?" she asked.
"Because even a moment of your love is worth years of pain later."
"Oh."
The little black girl got off the lady's lap and went back to the edge of the pond. Mommy was still there, and Daddy was still crying.
"Will he ever stop crying?" she asked the kind lady.
She nodded. "You see, the Angel felt sorry for the
Loving Ones, knowing how much they would suffer. He couldn't take the tears away but he made them special."
She dipped her hand into the pond and let the water
trickle off her fingers.
"He made them healing tears, formed from the special water here.
Each tear holds bits of all the happy times of purring
and petting and shared love.
And the promise of love once again.
As your daddy cries, he is healing. It may take a long
while, but the tears will help him feel better. In time he will be less sad
and he will smile when he thinks of you.
And he has already opened his heart again to another little baby."
"But then he will cry again one day," the little black
girl said.
The lady just smiled at her as she got to her feet.
"No, he will love again. That is all he will think
about."
She picked up Dusty and Miss Kitty and gave them hugs,
then scratched
Penny's ear just how she liked.
"Look," she said. "The butterflies have come. Shall we
go over to play?"
The other animals all ran ahead, but the little black
girl wasn't ready to leave her mommy.
"Will I ever get to be with her again?"
The kind lady nodded.
"You'll be in the eyes of every kitty she looks at.
You'll be in the purr of
every cat she pets. And late at night, when she's fast
asleep, your spirit will snuggle up close to her and you both will feel at
peace.
One day soon, you can even send her a rainbow to tell her you're safe
and waiting here for when it's her turn to come."
"I would like that," the little black girl said and took
one long look at her mommy.
She saw Mommy smile slightly and knew
Mommy had remembered how she peeled tape
away from the drapes to look outside.
"I love you, Mommy," she whispered. "It's okay if you
cry. You need to cry."
She glanced over at the other pets, running and playing
and laughing with the butterflies.
The little black girl was no longer the runt,
no longer the outcast. Though her new
friends could not replace Mommy,
she would not have to be alone here.
As an eager little panther would,
she wanted to play.
"Uh, Mommy? I gotta go play now, okay? But I'll be
around, I promise."
Then, with one more glance to see
if Mommy would begin to cry and heal,
the little black girl turned and raced after the others.
---------------------------------------
That was about 70% my writing. A lesser poem, adapted and expanded.
She remembered so much, and thought for sure
that she was not a little girl anymore, but a full
grown panther. Yet she had big clumsy
kitten paws, and huge bright kitten eyes.
Behind her, kitties were playing, chasing each other and
wrestling in the warm sunshine.
It looked like so much fun, but in front of her, through
the clear stillness of the pond's water, she could see her mommy.
And Mommy wanted to cry.
She pawed at the water, trying to get at her, and when
that didn't work, she jumped into the shallow water. All that got her was wet and Mommy's image danced away in the ripples.
"Mommy!" she cried. "Is something wrong?" The little black girl turned
around.
A lady was standing at the edge of the pond, her eyes
sad but filled with love.
The little black girl sighed and walked out of the water.
"There's been a mistake," she said. "I'm not supposed to be here."
She looked back at the water.
It was starting to still again and her mommy's image was coming back.
"I'm just a baby. Mommy said it had to be a mistake. She said I wasn't
supposed to come here yet." The kind lady sighed and sat down on the grass.
The little black girl climbed into her lap.
It wasn't Mommy's lap, but it was almost as good.
When she started to pet her and scratch under her ear like she liked, she
started to purr. She hadn't wanted to, but she couldn't help it.
"I'm afraid there is no mistake. You are supposed to be
here and your mommy knows it deep down in her heart," the lady said.
The little black girl sighed and laid her head on the lady's leg.
"But she's so sad. It hurts me to see her like this. And Daddy cries so much."
"But they knew right from the beginning this would happen."
"That I was sick?"
That surprised the little black girl.
No one had ever said anything and she had listened when
they thought she was sleeping.
All she had heard them talk about was how cute she was, or
how fast she was or how well she was hunting.
"No, not that you were sick," the lady said.
"But you see, they chose tears."
"No, they didn't," the little black girl argued. Who would choose to cry?
The lady gently brushed the top of her head with a kiss.
It made her feel safe and loved and warm - but she still worried about her mommy.
"Let me tell you a story," the lady said.
The little black girl looked up and saw other animals gathering around.
Cats - Dusty and Mittens and Ariel and Miss Kitty and little Cleo and Robin.
Merlin and Toby and Iggy and Zachary. Napoleon and Kamatte and Obi.
Dogs too- Penny and Baby and Morgan and Spunky and Belle.
Even a lizard named Clyde and some rats named Inky and
Lady and a hamster named Ham Sandwich.
They all lay down near the kind lady and looked up at her, waiting.
She smiled at them and began:
A long long time ago, the Loving Ones went to the Angel
in Charge. They were lonesome and asked the Angel to help them.
The Angel took them to a wall of windows and let them
look out the first window at all sorts of things - dolls and stuffed
animals and cars and toys and sporting events. "Here are things
you can love," the Angel said. "They will keep you from being lonesome."
"Oh, thank you," the Loving Ones said. "These are just what we need."
"You have chosen Pleasure," the Angel told them.
But after a time the Loving Ones came back to the Angel in Charge.
"Things are okay to love," they said. "But they don't care that we love them."
The Angel in Charge led them over to the second window. It looked out at all sorts of wild animals. "Here are animals to love," he said. "They will know you love them."
So the Loving Ones hurried out to care for the wild
animals. "You have chosen Satisfaction," the Angel said.
Some of the Loving Ones worked at zoos and wild animal
preserves, some just had bird feeders in their yards, but after a time some
came back to the Angel in Charge.
"They know we love them," they told the Angel. "But they don't love us back. We want to be loved in return."
So the Angel took them to the third window and showed
them lots of people walking around, hurrying places.
"Here are people for you to love," the Angel told them.
So the Loving Ones hurried off to find other people to love.
"You have chosen Commitment," the Angel said.
But after a time a lot of Loving Ones came back to the
Angel in Charge.
"People were okay to love," they said. "But sometimes
they stopped loving us and left. They broke our hearts."
The Angel just shook his head. "I cannot help you," he said.
"You will have to be satisfied with the choices I gave you."
As the Loving Ones were leaving, someone saw a window
off to one side and hurried to look out.
Through it, they could see puppies and kittens and dogs
and cats and lizards and hamsters and ferrets.
The other Loving Ones hurried over. "What about these?" they asked.
But the Angel just tried to shoo them away.
"Those are Personal Empathy Trainers," he said.
"But there's a problem with their system operations."
"Would they know that we love them?" someone asked.
"Yes," the Angel said.
"Would they love us back?" another asked.
"Yes," the Angel said.
"Will they stop loving us?" someone else asked.
"No," the Angel admitted. "They will love you forever."
"Then these are what we want," the Loving Ones said.
But the Angel was very upset.
"You don't understand," he told them. "You will have to
feed these animals."
"That's all right," the Loving Ones said.
"You will have to clean up after them and take care of them forever."
"We don't care."
The Loving Ones did not listen. They went down to where
the Pets were and picked them up, seeing the love in their own hearts
reflected in the animals' eyes.
"They were not programmed right," the Angel said. "We can't offer a
warranty. We don't know how durable they are. Some of their systems
malfunction very quickly, others last a long time."
But the Loving Ones did not care.
They were holding the warm little bodies and finding
their hearts so filled
with love that they thought they would burst.
"We will take our chances," they said.
"You do not understand." The Angel tried one more time.
"They are so dependent on you that even the most well-made of them is
not designed to out live you. You are destined to suffer their loss."
The Loving Ones looked at the sweetness in their arms
and nodded.
"That is how it should be. It is a fair trade for the
love they offer."
The Angel just watched them all go, shaking his head.
"You have chosen Tears," he whispered.
"So it is," the kind lady told the kitties.
"And so each mommy and daddy knows. When they take a baby into their heart, they know that one day it will leave them and they will cry."
The little black girl sat up. "So why do they take us in?" she asked.
"Because even a moment of your love is worth years of pain later."
"Oh."
The little black girl got off the lady's lap and went back to the edge of the pond. Mommy was still there, and Daddy was still crying.
"Will he ever stop crying?" she asked the kind lady.
She nodded. "You see, the Angel felt sorry for the
Loving Ones, knowing how much they would suffer. He couldn't take the tears away but he made them special."
She dipped her hand into the pond and let the water
trickle off her fingers.
"He made them healing tears, formed from the special water here.
Each tear holds bits of all the happy times of purring
and petting and shared love.
And the promise of love once again.
As your daddy cries, he is healing. It may take a long
while, but the tears will help him feel better. In time he will be less sad
and he will smile when he thinks of you.
And he has already opened his heart again to another little baby."
"But then he will cry again one day," the little black
girl said.
The lady just smiled at her as she got to her feet.
"No, he will love again. That is all he will think
about."
She picked up Dusty and Miss Kitty and gave them hugs,
then scratched
Penny's ear just how she liked.
"Look," she said. "The butterflies have come. Shall we
go over to play?"
The other animals all ran ahead, but the little black
girl wasn't ready to leave her mommy.
"Will I ever get to be with her again?"
The kind lady nodded.
"You'll be in the eyes of every kitty she looks at.
You'll be in the purr of
every cat she pets. And late at night, when she's fast
asleep, your spirit will snuggle up close to her and you both will feel at
peace.
One day soon, you can even send her a rainbow to tell her you're safe
and waiting here for when it's her turn to come."
"I would like that," the little black girl said and took
one long look at her mommy.
She saw Mommy smile slightly and knew
Mommy had remembered how she peeled tape
away from the drapes to look outside.
"I love you, Mommy," she whispered. "It's okay if you
cry. You need to cry."
She glanced over at the other pets, running and playing
and laughing with the butterflies.
The little black girl was no longer the runt,
no longer the outcast. Though her new
friends could not replace Mommy,
she would not have to be alone here.
As an eager little panther would,
she wanted to play.
"Uh, Mommy? I gotta go play now, okay? But I'll be
around, I promise."
Then, with one more glance to see
if Mommy would begin to cry and heal,
the little black girl turned and raced after the others.
---------------------------------------
That was about 70% my writing. A lesser poem, adapted and expanded.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Gender roles in entertainment.
This was originally in response to a foolish post at this NSFW image. I felt it has value here, though it is speaking to one specific person; it also speaks to a problem and type of person at large.
You have a two layered problem. Firstly, you believe that your fantasy version of Samus is the "true" one. She is not. You did not create her. She did not have any female identity before; she had the movie and comic book "Woman with tragic past became complete ideal man to deal with it." if she had anything. It was those comics which you claim to have read that first established her as a real human being instead of a one-dimensional caricature.
A real woman, and most men, would actually be extremely screwed up by seeing their parents murdered at a young age. Worse than that, one of the only two things she came to love since then? Dead due to the actions of the Space Pirates. Now she comes here, and here's the other of the two things she loved, and here's the Space Pirates again. What was her answer? She reverted instantly to wayward daughter trying to win her Daddy's approval again.
Pay attention to the plot, Adam did not tell Samus she could not use her weapons, Samus shoved that responsibility into his hands. She tried to instantly set herself up as more loyal to Adam than his own men. "See Daddy? I'm powerful but I won't subvert you or make your friends look bad.
Aren't I a good girl?" If he had refused her outright, she would have fallen right into another attention seeking behavior. The entire game is Adam trying his best to help a woman he loved, who was not entirely sane. He had seemingly hoped that she found herself after she left his command, but she had not. Sometimes the only way to help someone deal with their issues is to play along until the time is right, and then break
those issues one by one. It's actually common psychotherapy and not at all unresonable a good leader becomes familiar with things that work to help the troops under him. Leadership is not "I order, you obey". Leadership is showing others they can count on you and trust your judgment.
Here's the thing: issues that deep are not just "shrug and get over it", like your fantasy Samus has done. That is not feminine identity at all; it is masculine identity. You are correct, Samus is the first female character in all of gaming; and it didn't shine until Other M. Is she a bit crazy? You bet! Why do you think the game's name is an anagram of "Mother"?
By the time Fusion rolls around, many years later, she's worked through it all and now only has fond memories of Adam. She no longer has the Daddy issues to the same level, but they're clearly not gone entirely. If she must take orders from above... it's most normal for her to take them from Adam.
And that's the thing. Issues aren't solved that easily. If you take into a relationship with a real woman that she is being "weak" because of psychological issues, you'll either have yourself a fine doormat, or you'll find yourself dumped for a better man.
Some have observed that the characterization of women in popular media has a lot to do with our amazing divorce rates; and honestly I'd tend to agree. The first time a genuinely flawed but fundamentally strong woman shows up in a game, people instantly think of.. well.. the image above.
That's not a healthy view of women, that unless they are men with tits they obviously wish to be used and abused like whores.
And this is not even NEW! The series creator said the entire existence of Samus was based on Ripley from Aliens. Vasquez was a man with tits, Ripley was not. All of Ripley's actions were driven by the loss of her first crew, and of the life she lived on Earth before. Newt was her daughter, and she would NOT lose another daughter to these Aliens! Did the aliens directly take her real daughter? Well.. yes. If it were not for that first encounter she would have been able to see her little girl grow up.
At the time, Ellen Ripley challenged gender roles, and ti was wonderful.. but entertainment media then went mad with it, took entirely the wrong lesson from it. Ellen Ripley was a woman driven to her extreme, and she reacted as any strong woman would.. she stepped up.
People over the next 30 years saw Ripley stepping up... and then promptly forgot the reasons why she did so. They replaced her drive and motivation with male stoicism. Female action heroes today are ridiculed if they ever display the slightest weakness, and people are even shocked when the tomboy sorts aren;t auto-magically lesbians.
Real life is a lot lot LOT more complex, and this is the reason feminists aren't any happier with modern female heroes than they were with the helpless damsels in distress of old. Look what effect it had on you people, if a woman doesn't fit into one of your narrowly defined molds; you can't handle it and instantly resort to degrading even the creator of the series for writing his character as he sees fit.
You have a two layered problem. Firstly, you believe that your fantasy version of Samus is the "true" one. She is not. You did not create her. She did not have any female identity before; she had the movie and comic book "Woman with tragic past became complete ideal man to deal with it." if she had anything. It was those comics which you claim to have read that first established her as a real human being instead of a one-dimensional caricature.
A real woman, and most men, would actually be extremely screwed up by seeing their parents murdered at a young age. Worse than that, one of the only two things she came to love since then? Dead due to the actions of the Space Pirates. Now she comes here, and here's the other of the two things she loved, and here's the Space Pirates again. What was her answer? She reverted instantly to wayward daughter trying to win her Daddy's approval again.
Pay attention to the plot, Adam did not tell Samus she could not use her weapons, Samus shoved that responsibility into his hands. She tried to instantly set herself up as more loyal to Adam than his own men. "See Daddy? I'm powerful but I won't subvert you or make your friends look bad.
Aren't I a good girl?" If he had refused her outright, she would have fallen right into another attention seeking behavior. The entire game is Adam trying his best to help a woman he loved, who was not entirely sane. He had seemingly hoped that she found herself after she left his command, but she had not. Sometimes the only way to help someone deal with their issues is to play along until the time is right, and then break
those issues one by one. It's actually common psychotherapy and not at all unresonable a good leader becomes familiar with things that work to help the troops under him. Leadership is not "I order, you obey". Leadership is showing others they can count on you and trust your judgment.
Here's the thing: issues that deep are not just "shrug and get over it", like your fantasy Samus has done. That is not feminine identity at all; it is masculine identity. You are correct, Samus is the first female character in all of gaming; and it didn't shine until Other M. Is she a bit crazy? You bet! Why do you think the game's name is an anagram of "Mother"?
By the time Fusion rolls around, many years later, she's worked through it all and now only has fond memories of Adam. She no longer has the Daddy issues to the same level, but they're clearly not gone entirely. If she must take orders from above... it's most normal for her to take them from Adam.
And that's the thing. Issues aren't solved that easily. If you take into a relationship with a real woman that she is being "weak" because of psychological issues, you'll either have yourself a fine doormat, or you'll find yourself dumped for a better man.
Some have observed that the characterization of women in popular media has a lot to do with our amazing divorce rates; and honestly I'd tend to agree. The first time a genuinely flawed but fundamentally strong woman shows up in a game, people instantly think of.. well.. the image above.
That's not a healthy view of women, that unless they are men with tits they obviously wish to be used and abused like whores.
And this is not even NEW! The series creator said the entire existence of Samus was based on Ripley from Aliens. Vasquez was a man with tits, Ripley was not. All of Ripley's actions were driven by the loss of her first crew, and of the life she lived on Earth before. Newt was her daughter, and she would NOT lose another daughter to these Aliens! Did the aliens directly take her real daughter? Well.. yes. If it were not for that first encounter she would have been able to see her little girl grow up.
At the time, Ellen Ripley challenged gender roles, and ti was wonderful.. but entertainment media then went mad with it, took entirely the wrong lesson from it. Ellen Ripley was a woman driven to her extreme, and she reacted as any strong woman would.. she stepped up.
People over the next 30 years saw Ripley stepping up... and then promptly forgot the reasons why she did so. They replaced her drive and motivation with male stoicism. Female action heroes today are ridiculed if they ever display the slightest weakness, and people are even shocked when the tomboy sorts aren;t auto-magically lesbians.
Real life is a lot lot LOT more complex, and this is the reason feminists aren't any happier with modern female heroes than they were with the helpless damsels in distress of old. Look what effect it had on you people, if a woman doesn't fit into one of your narrowly defined molds; you can't handle it and instantly resort to degrading even the creator of the series for writing his character as he sees fit.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Neato!
Hey check it out! I had it pointed out by someone that I was so angry at Obama for getting us into yet another war while Americans were starving to death that I cussed at him. Was it wrong to do that? Yes, and I freely admit that. Now it's Obama's turn to apologize for starting yet another pointless war while people in the country he has sworn to protect are dying in need of just a few dollars a day for food, shelter and job training.
I won't hold my breath.
In the meantime, the person who pointed that out showed, again, an utter lack of even the most basic reading comprehension, and gave me a good laugh. What must go through these people's minds? "He said a racist word! Never mind those levels of anger being perfectly justified, he SAID A MEAN WORD MOMMY!" What drives it into pure comedy is that this person's very first response was, in addition to displaying no reading comrpehension whatsoever, so jaw-droppingly vulgar and insulting as to make the word "nigger" look like a love sonnet in comparison.
The more I run into people like that, the more I understand how people like Bush keep getting voted in. When special pleading, hypocrisy, and good old fashioned poisoning the well are so common that they cause people to lose focus and follow a red herring? Yeah... people like that getting elected makes a lot more sense.
I won't hold my breath.
In the meantime, the person who pointed that out showed, again, an utter lack of even the most basic reading comprehension, and gave me a good laugh. What must go through these people's minds? "He said a racist word! Never mind those levels of anger being perfectly justified, he SAID A MEAN WORD MOMMY!" What drives it into pure comedy is that this person's very first response was, in addition to displaying no reading comrpehension whatsoever, so jaw-droppingly vulgar and insulting as to make the word "nigger" look like a love sonnet in comparison.
The more I run into people like that, the more I understand how people like Bush keep getting voted in. When special pleading, hypocrisy, and good old fashioned poisoning the well are so common that they cause people to lose focus and follow a red herring? Yeah... people like that getting elected makes a lot more sense.
On War and Whining
It's uncanny how screwed up people's priorities are. We're threatening to screw around in Yemen now. Hey, there's still people starving in your own country, Obama, and you're actually starting to make Bush look like a peace-loving superhippie. But the same people who used to rightfully chide Bush for his actions will get on their knees and fellate their Messiah despite him getting worse than Bush.
Maybe we should give him another Nobel Peace Prize for sticking our country's nose in yet more places it doesn't belong. At least Bush only fought a 2 front BS war in the Middle East, Obama's bucking for a polyhedron. I never thought a Dem would ever be worse than a Republican, but here we are. Blood for oil continues, the rich continue to get richer, we still torture, we still hold goat-herders in offshore prisons, and now we're stumbling across the mideast like a drunken Irishman trying to fight everyone we bump into.
Maybe we should give him another Nobel Peace Prize for sticking our country's nose in yet more places it doesn't belong. At least Bush only fought a 2 front BS war in the Middle East, Obama's bucking for a polyhedron. I never thought a Dem would ever be worse than a Republican, but here we are. Blood for oil continues, the rich continue to get richer, we still torture, we still hold goat-herders in offshore prisons, and now we're stumbling across the mideast like a drunken Irishman trying to fight everyone we bump into.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
This bears repeating:
Someone today wrote to another person on a board I frequent:
"The damn disc drive in your computer, used to load your OS that eventually sets you up to ignorantly blather here reads discs with a laser - which was a predicted quantum effect of light."
No it most certainly fucking was NOT a "predicted quantum effect", it came about because of hard scientific observation as to the actual effects of light and experimentation with data storage. Thank you for providing yet another example of religion masquerading as science. "Quantum prediction" has exactly as much to do with optical drives as it has to do with what you had for breakfast this morning.
It's put forward as explaining everything, but it explains nothing. Just call it "quantum information mirroring" and shut your brain off, stop researching actual causes and effects.
Most people don't even realize that Schrodinger's Cat is actually a joke meant to demonstrate how absurd the rape of actual quantum physics and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in science circles really is.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is as follows: Extremely small (quantum) particles cannot be observed by any currently known means because they all require bombarding these particles with heavier particles. Because you cannot observe, with our current technology, these events without severely screwing up the results, it is impossible to know what's really going on at that level.
Some persons took "you cannot reliably observe particles smaller than light particles because your light particles are way too heavy and fast" to mean "you cannot observe anything without significantly changing the outcome, therefore everything exists in every possible state until it is observed."
It's like the old Zen thought. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody observes it, does it still make a sound? Of course it makes a sound, the thought exercise is supposed to be about the relative significance of events. The new religion in a labcoat is the dumbass in the first year philosophy class who took it literally and went "Oh my god! *bong hit* that's so deep! My mind is expanding.. nothing happens until it's observed, and therefore until it's observed, EVERYTHING has happened, man! We can USE this.. to like.. transmit information! If one box has a glove and the other box has no glove and nobody knows which is which, it's not decided until the box is opened! Instant information transfer, man! Now we just need to *bong hit* find some way to attach OTHER information along with THAT transmission!"
I mean, don't get me wrong, I loved Ender's Game as much as the next guy... but there's a reason the ansible doesn't occur in any hard science fiction. Quantum entanglement is hilarious bullshit, because it presumes on somehow separating two subatomic particles yet maintaining the bond which prevents that separation. You can't build on that. That's not science. Until someone finds a way to make that happen, the rest is pissing in the wind.
You can't skip that many steps, we might as well be 11th century man arguing about the makeup of the firmament based on the theory that a bird can only fly so high because they knock into it. I wish I was making that absurd example up, but those are the sorts of things that happened in the Dark Ages. Welcome to the beginning of The Dark Ages II: Darkness Appearing as Light.
"The damn disc drive in your computer, used to load your OS that eventually sets you up to ignorantly blather here reads discs with a laser - which was a predicted quantum effect of light."
No it most certainly fucking was NOT a "predicted quantum effect", it came about because of hard scientific observation as to the actual effects of light and experimentation with data storage. Thank you for providing yet another example of religion masquerading as science. "Quantum prediction" has exactly as much to do with optical drives as it has to do with what you had for breakfast this morning.
It's put forward as explaining everything, but it explains nothing. Just call it "quantum information mirroring" and shut your brain off, stop researching actual causes and effects.
Most people don't even realize that Schrodinger's Cat is actually a joke meant to demonstrate how absurd the rape of actual quantum physics and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in science circles really is.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is as follows: Extremely small (quantum) particles cannot be observed by any currently known means because they all require bombarding these particles with heavier particles. Because you cannot observe, with our current technology, these events without severely screwing up the results, it is impossible to know what's really going on at that level.
Some persons took "you cannot reliably observe particles smaller than light particles because your light particles are way too heavy and fast" to mean "you cannot observe anything without significantly changing the outcome, therefore everything exists in every possible state until it is observed."
It's like the old Zen thought. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody observes it, does it still make a sound? Of course it makes a sound, the thought exercise is supposed to be about the relative significance of events. The new religion in a labcoat is the dumbass in the first year philosophy class who took it literally and went "Oh my god! *bong hit* that's so deep! My mind is expanding.. nothing happens until it's observed, and therefore until it's observed, EVERYTHING has happened, man! We can USE this.. to like.. transmit information! If one box has a glove and the other box has no glove and nobody knows which is which, it's not decided until the box is opened! Instant information transfer, man! Now we just need to *bong hit* find some way to attach OTHER information along with THAT transmission!"
I mean, don't get me wrong, I loved Ender's Game as much as the next guy... but there's a reason the ansible doesn't occur in any hard science fiction. Quantum entanglement is hilarious bullshit, because it presumes on somehow separating two subatomic particles yet maintaining the bond which prevents that separation. You can't build on that. That's not science. Until someone finds a way to make that happen, the rest is pissing in the wind.
You can't skip that many steps, we might as well be 11th century man arguing about the makeup of the firmament based on the theory that a bird can only fly so high because they knock into it. I wish I was making that absurd example up, but those are the sorts of things that happened in the Dark Ages. Welcome to the beginning of The Dark Ages II: Darkness Appearing as Light.
Friday, March 25, 2011
This will only make sense to fellow City of Heroes players.
Praetoria bores me.
Firstly, for those who say "it's just a game"? Yep. It is. And that's why Praetoria does not offend me... it merely bores me, it's just a game. I'm tired of seeing that message of "nobody's a hero" presented as "edgy" and "cool", it makes my eyes glaze over with boredom. To try so hard to fill a place with "grey zones" that you only come up with a bunch of black is immersion-breaking for me, and it makes me rush out of the unpleasant and boring plotlines. Does this happen in the Isles and Paragon City as well? Yes! Several plots are just as stupid. The difference is you can opt out of them and go do something else.
Praetoria offers no such option, and is thus a boring place to me.
When people try to defend the actions of the characters in the game, that rankles me a bit. There is a reason revolutions in the real world that are long on propaganda but short on actual solutions are filled with young people. An inability to empathize with people who disagree, and inability to think past the short term are, in fact, recognized signs of immaturity. Not only is it immature, but it is also cowardice to say "by any means necessary", because those means invariably involve people who just want to be left alone dying for your cause.
The only person who should ever die for your cause is you, those who raise arms directly to fight against you, and others who directly take up arms with you. It is immaturity to believe it excusable to put the lives of people who have nothing to do with a conflict ahead of your own life.
Let's make this easy: Sending people to blow up a hospital to prove your enemies are not infallible = immature and cowardly.
Sending people to raid and destroy a military target to prove your enemies are not infallible = desperate and possibly crazy, but a mature and brave decision.
That has been my entire objection to Praetoria and why it is so boring to me. All of your choices except one involve your character forcibly being a coward. The one which DOES allow you to show some empathy and gives you a mature set of principles to stick to? In the end you're again forced to be a coward; and worse have to put up with the game telling you how evil you are for trying to make the best of a bad situation. The Responsibility Loyalist path, right up until the end, gives you chances to right wrongs no matter if it's done by the gangs, the Resistance, or elements of Cole's own forces.
The Warden Resistance path forces you to look the other way, and the only reason you can get the Resistance to ever cease an atrocity is because otherwise they might out you as a double agent. You cannot get the Resistance to be brave and mature by your own actions, you can only look the other way and make weak, hopeless statements to a group clearly led by someone equally as mad, but for more chaotic than, the "Tyrant" they're trying to overthrow.
I say the Praetorian plotline mostly appeals to immature folks because it DOES. Lack of empathy and cowardice, a willingness to throw others under the bus (but never putting yourself at risk to protect the people you are supposedly saving) to further your own cause are actual real signs of immaturity.
To paraphrase KoToR, which is in fact a further paraphrase of Chesty Puller (and if you read Orson Scott Card you'll recognize something Ender said which also derives from this old Marine's saying) , "Warriors kill because they hate who opposes them, Soldiers fight and die like maggots under a blowtorch when necessary because they love what they've left behind."
Another nice chestnut of his is "Soldiers step in front of civilians, cowards use them as bargaining chips."
Guard your women and children well
Send these bastards back to hell
We'll teach them the ways of war
They won't come here anymore
That is what "by any means necessary" really means. It means you stand up and give your life to protect people who will never even know what you've done for them. You say "I will die for you, to protect you". Sometimes collateral damage happens, and it should pain you when it does, but to intentionally target civilians or, through your own inaction, allow them to die is cowardice.
And some people are simply immature cowards. It's a big world out there, and it takes all kinds to populate it, but one should at least be able to accept what they are. If you don't want your arguments to be called immature, then stop making immature arguments.
A lawyer acquaintance of mine has said there are three kinds of Defense Lawyers in this world. Type 1 are the wide eyed crusaders, who really are doing their best to ensure an accused gets a fair trial. Type 2 are those who talk like type 1, but it's all bologna. when push comes to shove, they do what's best for their career and all that rhetoric means nothing. Type 3 are those who simply like money, are good at lawyering, and don;t really care what goes on so long as they win the case. He freely admits he is type 3. He and I both respect type 1 and type 3, even if he disagrees with the morals of 1 and I of type 3, because they're not hiding behind a layer false righteousness. Those who beleive "any means necessary" includes sacrificing innocent persons to make a point would find themselves right at home as a type 2 criminal defense lawyer.
At least with Statesman and Recluse, you know where you stand and can do your own thing accordingly. In Praetoria? You're forced to be evil, ultimately.
Firstly, for those who say "it's just a game"? Yep. It is. And that's why Praetoria does not offend me... it merely bores me, it's just a game. I'm tired of seeing that message of "nobody's a hero" presented as "edgy" and "cool", it makes my eyes glaze over with boredom. To try so hard to fill a place with "grey zones" that you only come up with a bunch of black is immersion-breaking for me, and it makes me rush out of the unpleasant and boring plotlines. Does this happen in the Isles and Paragon City as well? Yes! Several plots are just as stupid. The difference is you can opt out of them and go do something else.
Praetoria offers no such option, and is thus a boring place to me.
When people try to defend the actions of the characters in the game, that rankles me a bit. There is a reason revolutions in the real world that are long on propaganda but short on actual solutions are filled with young people. An inability to empathize with people who disagree, and inability to think past the short term are, in fact, recognized signs of immaturity. Not only is it immature, but it is also cowardice to say "by any means necessary", because those means invariably involve people who just want to be left alone dying for your cause.
The only person who should ever die for your cause is you, those who raise arms directly to fight against you, and others who directly take up arms with you. It is immaturity to believe it excusable to put the lives of people who have nothing to do with a conflict ahead of your own life.
Let's make this easy: Sending people to blow up a hospital to prove your enemies are not infallible = immature and cowardly.
Sending people to raid and destroy a military target to prove your enemies are not infallible = desperate and possibly crazy, but a mature and brave decision.
That has been my entire objection to Praetoria and why it is so boring to me. All of your choices except one involve your character forcibly being a coward. The one which DOES allow you to show some empathy and gives you a mature set of principles to stick to? In the end you're again forced to be a coward; and worse have to put up with the game telling you how evil you are for trying to make the best of a bad situation. The Responsibility Loyalist path, right up until the end, gives you chances to right wrongs no matter if it's done by the gangs, the Resistance, or elements of Cole's own forces.
The Warden Resistance path forces you to look the other way, and the only reason you can get the Resistance to ever cease an atrocity is because otherwise they might out you as a double agent. You cannot get the Resistance to be brave and mature by your own actions, you can only look the other way and make weak, hopeless statements to a group clearly led by someone equally as mad, but for more chaotic than, the "Tyrant" they're trying to overthrow.
I say the Praetorian plotline mostly appeals to immature folks because it DOES. Lack of empathy and cowardice, a willingness to throw others under the bus (but never putting yourself at risk to protect the people you are supposedly saving) to further your own cause are actual real signs of immaturity.
To paraphrase KoToR, which is in fact a further paraphrase of Chesty Puller (and if you read Orson Scott Card you'll recognize something Ender said which also derives from this old Marine's saying) , "Warriors kill because they hate who opposes them, Soldiers fight and die like maggots under a blowtorch when necessary because they love what they've left behind."
Another nice chestnut of his is "Soldiers step in front of civilians, cowards use them as bargaining chips."
Guard your women and children well
Send these bastards back to hell
We'll teach them the ways of war
They won't come here anymore
That is what "by any means necessary" really means. It means you stand up and give your life to protect people who will never even know what you've done for them. You say "I will die for you, to protect you". Sometimes collateral damage happens, and it should pain you when it does, but to intentionally target civilians or, through your own inaction, allow them to die is cowardice.
And some people are simply immature cowards. It's a big world out there, and it takes all kinds to populate it, but one should at least be able to accept what they are. If you don't want your arguments to be called immature, then stop making immature arguments.
A lawyer acquaintance of mine has said there are three kinds of Defense Lawyers in this world. Type 1 are the wide eyed crusaders, who really are doing their best to ensure an accused gets a fair trial. Type 2 are those who talk like type 1, but it's all bologna. when push comes to shove, they do what's best for their career and all that rhetoric means nothing. Type 3 are those who simply like money, are good at lawyering, and don;t really care what goes on so long as they win the case. He freely admits he is type 3. He and I both respect type 1 and type 3, even if he disagrees with the morals of 1 and I of type 3, because they're not hiding behind a layer false righteousness. Those who beleive "any means necessary" includes sacrificing innocent persons to make a point would find themselves right at home as a type 2 criminal defense lawyer.
At least with Statesman and Recluse, you know where you stand and can do your own thing accordingly. In Praetoria? You're forced to be evil, ultimately.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Stuff
War in Iraq. War in Afghanistan.. but at least they attacked us. War in Libya. War in Egypt.
We waste 100 million dollars a DAY doing this. Do you see this? This is what ONE million dollars looks like in one hundred dollar bills. We are wasting a HUNDRED of those images a day fighting wars that have nothing to do with us.
Meanwhile, this is what's going on in our own country. ONE of those piles would be enough to feed half a million homeless children per day, and Obama thinks it's neatokeen to waste a hundred of said piles a day helping people who will only spit on us for our trouble.
I do not give a fuck about Libya. I CAN'T give a fuck about Libya while this is going on. How dare you act like any of that overseas shit matters compared to that? I've got nothing positive or deep to say. It's visceral. Fuck you, Obama you fucking scumbag. Fuck you like I previously said fuck Bush.
What would Jesus do, Obama? Would you even know? Have you even glanced at your Bible in the last 30 years? I'm a dirty filthy pagan, and even I understand the word of Jesus better than you, you subhuman scum.
We waste 100 million dollars a DAY doing this. Do you see this? This is what ONE million dollars looks like in one hundred dollar bills. We are wasting a HUNDRED of those images a day fighting wars that have nothing to do with us.
Meanwhile, this is what's going on in our own country. ONE of those piles would be enough to feed half a million homeless children per day, and Obama thinks it's neatokeen to waste a hundred of said piles a day helping people who will only spit on us for our trouble.
I do not give a fuck about Libya. I CAN'T give a fuck about Libya while this is going on. How dare you act like any of that overseas shit matters compared to that? I've got nothing positive or deep to say. It's visceral. Fuck you, Obama you fucking scumbag. Fuck you like I previously said fuck Bush.
What would Jesus do, Obama? Would you even know? Have you even glanced at your Bible in the last 30 years? I'm a dirty filthy pagan, and even I understand the word of Jesus better than you, you subhuman scum.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
On my beliefs.
Shinto did not find me. I had my beliefs before I knew what it was. I sought and sought and tortured my soul over it all.. and I found Shinto. What's important is to Shinto is "Everyone is good unless they are afraid that being good will hurt them". That and the fact that world just needs to see that there's enough for all of us.. and no reason to be afraid. I had these beliefs before I found my religion. I believe in my religion because it is true, not that I believe what is "true" because my religion tells me to.
I don't need to point at a book to tell me what is true; I already knew it from the pain, violence, and joys of my life. I simply found the religion of others who understood it.
I don't need to point at a book to tell me what is true; I already knew it from the pain, violence, and joys of my life. I simply found the religion of others who understood it.
Militant Atheism and militant theism.
Watch the first 35 seconds of this. For those who need the background, Dr. Cox is a generally good but abrasive person, when it comes to religion he is a smug know it all asshole. And this goes out to militant atheists. Why does it wound you so personally that others have belief? Why do you NEED everyone to feel as if there's nothing greater? I understand the feel of being controlled.. I am an "Other" in a primarily Judeo-Christian land that has a laughable "New-Age Wiccan" piece that whines a lot. When there were real attempts by Christians to control the hearts and minds of their fellow man, I notice them and fight them. When faith conspires to control others, you fight those means of control; you DIE to fight those means of control. But you know what? That's where it needs to stop.
If you feel the need to fight the faith itself, rather than to fight it trying to reach past the boundaries that allow other men to be free, the problem is in you and not in the faithful. Their belief does you absolutely no harm until the point where it actually DOES harm you. When it does harm you, you put a stop to that, but you do NOT need to go on and harm others. You think you're smarter than the faithful? Bra-fucking-vo. Guess what? They also think they're smarter than you. You're both free to think that and I don't give a shit until you cross that line and try to force your beliefs on them.
Do you think that Christians are forcing their faith on you? Great. How is demeaning them for their faith any better than them demeaning you for your lack of faith?
Most Christians I've known in my life are able to see when someone is not interested and walk away. I have met 3 atheists in my life who are able to walk away rather than whining some martyr bullshit about how anyone who does anything for reasons of faith are somehow lesser human beings than those who do good for reasons not of faith. And I say to them? Fuck you. Anyone who is so insecure that they can't walk away and just let others believe are subhuman scum. The per-capita balance of assholes who just can't let it go in the US and Canada seems to be a lot higher for the atheists than it is for the Christians. I survive in an interfaith marriage because my wife and I tolerate the beliefs of one another.
Militant atheists are simply children compared to the likes of us; and children need to be taught right from wrong. If you get the feeling that I am saying my wife and I are better than you, the super-fundamentalist Christian or the militant Atheist? Good. You're capable of reading comprehension at at least a 10th grade level. I absolutely am saying that we are better people than you.
You know what else I am saying? We are no better than anyone else can be. All it takes is learning to truly tolerate. It's not easy. A Journeyman Carpenter is a lot better at carpentry than a beginner, and persons who survive an interfaith marriage are a lot better at religion than an angry atheist or a bible-thumper who chooses to believe in their bible rather than honestly talk to their God. We're not jealous of it; there is no limited supply to love. We want everyone to learn tolerance. We are better than you; and you need to get over your hatred of it. There's a difference between arrogance and honest self-assessment. We're no better than anyone else can be.
Join us. Learn that tolerance means little more than this "I don't give a crap WHY you are good, only that you are. I don't have to love why you are good, but I'd be as wrong to hate why you're good as you would be to hate why I am good."
If you feel the need to fight the faith itself, rather than to fight it trying to reach past the boundaries that allow other men to be free, the problem is in you and not in the faithful. Their belief does you absolutely no harm until the point where it actually DOES harm you. When it does harm you, you put a stop to that, but you do NOT need to go on and harm others. You think you're smarter than the faithful? Bra-fucking-vo. Guess what? They also think they're smarter than you. You're both free to think that and I don't give a shit until you cross that line and try to force your beliefs on them.
Do you think that Christians are forcing their faith on you? Great. How is demeaning them for their faith any better than them demeaning you for your lack of faith?
Most Christians I've known in my life are able to see when someone is not interested and walk away. I have met 3 atheists in my life who are able to walk away rather than whining some martyr bullshit about how anyone who does anything for reasons of faith are somehow lesser human beings than those who do good for reasons not of faith. And I say to them? Fuck you. Anyone who is so insecure that they can't walk away and just let others believe are subhuman scum. The per-capita balance of assholes who just can't let it go in the US and Canada seems to be a lot higher for the atheists than it is for the Christians. I survive in an interfaith marriage because my wife and I tolerate the beliefs of one another.
Militant atheists are simply children compared to the likes of us; and children need to be taught right from wrong. If you get the feeling that I am saying my wife and I are better than you, the super-fundamentalist Christian or the militant Atheist? Good. You're capable of reading comprehension at at least a 10th grade level. I absolutely am saying that we are better people than you.
You know what else I am saying? We are no better than anyone else can be. All it takes is learning to truly tolerate. It's not easy. A Journeyman Carpenter is a lot better at carpentry than a beginner, and persons who survive an interfaith marriage are a lot better at religion than an angry atheist or a bible-thumper who chooses to believe in their bible rather than honestly talk to their God. We're not jealous of it; there is no limited supply to love. We want everyone to learn tolerance. We are better than you; and you need to get over your hatred of it. There's a difference between arrogance and honest self-assessment. We're no better than anyone else can be.
Join us. Learn that tolerance means little more than this "I don't give a crap WHY you are good, only that you are. I don't have to love why you are good, but I'd be as wrong to hate why you're good as you would be to hate why I am good."
Monday, March 7, 2011
Early Alternative Sexuality Assignment
My brother's former roommate is a sad case. We're gonna launch right in here. He'd been blowing guys since the age of 12, but as he got older he started to have thoughts that he might actually be straight. His parents had already basically disowned him so he had nobody to talk to about that, and his boyfriends would, as he once said, just give him pills and things to smoke until he felt better and the doubt and questions went away.
As my brother tells me, one day he comes home to find Keith had blown his head open with a .50 AE handgun, he was in the presence of an image of his father and clutching a piece of paper that showed he was HIV positive. Seems like all the suicide note he needed.
All in all it's a tragedy of the worst kind that can happen to anyone. He experimented in his youth (like many folks do) but somehow those preying on the child had him convinced he was gay just because of said experimentalism. He "came out" to his parents at the age of 13, and they basically eventually disowned him, and he spent the rest of his life searching for a childhood that had been frankly stolen from him.
Creepy child molestors. Also a society so "tolerant" that it seems to look the other way when people find out "at a young age" they're gay when frankly at their age they're still learning and it's horrible to declare oneself ANYTHING at that age. You'd think society would have learned when it was the other way, and gay people were declaring themselves straight at far too young an age to know for sure. Then 20 years later come spinning out of the closet, selfishly destroying the family they'd built on their lie. "Tolerance" means giving kids some fucking room to figure out life. But you know what else is important? The character to point out that a 12 year old shouldn't be sticking his dick in anything, much less something three times his age.
And then the two other big parts; how rather than face their problems people medicate them away. Had Keith been actually able to seek help for his problems he might have matured into.. whatever sort of man he wanted to be. His super-fundamentalist parents were useless in that regard; they shoulda spent less time worshiping their church and more time talking to their God. The people he did talk to, though? The chickenhawk "boyfriends"? Of course they wouldn't help him honestly explore his sexuality. If he ended up straight, then they wouldn't get to fuck the pretty little blonde kid anymore; and Keith simply didn't know anyone else to turn to. All he ever got were super religious sorts who wanted to pray him to heterosexuality but condemned him harshly, or therapists who maddeningly kept miminimizng his doubts and trying to prevent him from going "back into the closet".
Then there's the final part: sex education. Maybe if he knew how safe sex worked he wouldn't have killed himself at the age of 19 finding out he was dying from advanced infection he apparently got 4-6 years earlier.
Now I.. won't get into my feelings on teenagers and sexual play right now, but one thing is for sure. I want teenagers to be able to SAFELY play and explore, without asshole adults touching them, telling them they're evil for being gay, or even locking them into homosexuality at an early age. That last part is just as evil as the first two. Our society is far too eager to cheer for a preteen/early teen who declares himself homosexual. At that age nobody on the face of the earth has ever known jackshit about how the world or even their own emotions work. my brother and I are of genius intellect and always were, and we had no clue. None.
If a twelve year old tells you he thinks he's gay, you should treat it exactly as if he told you he wanted to be an astronaut. Answer his questions but keep your fucking activism to yourself. Children are impressionable, and they need FACTS, not bullshit.
And frankly, the "facts" are that gay people tend to end up extremely fucked up. I'm gonna get some guff for that but.. there are folks who say 10% of the society is homosexual. That sounds high but.. fine. If 10% of the population is gay; I get the feeling that for 92% of those people it is a symptom of a greater problem rather than an actual orientation.
As my brother tells me, one day he comes home to find Keith had blown his head open with a .50 AE handgun, he was in the presence of an image of his father and clutching a piece of paper that showed he was HIV positive. Seems like all the suicide note he needed.
All in all it's a tragedy of the worst kind that can happen to anyone. He experimented in his youth (like many folks do) but somehow those preying on the child had him convinced he was gay just because of said experimentalism. He "came out" to his parents at the age of 13, and they basically eventually disowned him, and he spent the rest of his life searching for a childhood that had been frankly stolen from him.
Creepy child molestors. Also a society so "tolerant" that it seems to look the other way when people find out "at a young age" they're gay when frankly at their age they're still learning and it's horrible to declare oneself ANYTHING at that age. You'd think society would have learned when it was the other way, and gay people were declaring themselves straight at far too young an age to know for sure. Then 20 years later come spinning out of the closet, selfishly destroying the family they'd built on their lie. "Tolerance" means giving kids some fucking room to figure out life. But you know what else is important? The character to point out that a 12 year old shouldn't be sticking his dick in anything, much less something three times his age.
And then the two other big parts; how rather than face their problems people medicate them away. Had Keith been actually able to seek help for his problems he might have matured into.. whatever sort of man he wanted to be. His super-fundamentalist parents were useless in that regard; they shoulda spent less time worshiping their church and more time talking to their God. The people he did talk to, though? The chickenhawk "boyfriends"? Of course they wouldn't help him honestly explore his sexuality. If he ended up straight, then they wouldn't get to fuck the pretty little blonde kid anymore; and Keith simply didn't know anyone else to turn to. All he ever got were super religious sorts who wanted to pray him to heterosexuality but condemned him harshly, or therapists who maddeningly kept miminimizng his doubts and trying to prevent him from going "back into the closet".
Then there's the final part: sex education. Maybe if he knew how safe sex worked he wouldn't have killed himself at the age of 19 finding out he was dying from advanced infection he apparently got 4-6 years earlier.
Now I.. won't get into my feelings on teenagers and sexual play right now, but one thing is for sure. I want teenagers to be able to SAFELY play and explore, without asshole adults touching them, telling them they're evil for being gay, or even locking them into homosexuality at an early age. That last part is just as evil as the first two. Our society is far too eager to cheer for a preteen/early teen who declares himself homosexual. At that age nobody on the face of the earth has ever known jackshit about how the world or even their own emotions work. my brother and I are of genius intellect and always were, and we had no clue. None.
If a twelve year old tells you he thinks he's gay, you should treat it exactly as if he told you he wanted to be an astronaut. Answer his questions but keep your fucking activism to yourself. Children are impressionable, and they need FACTS, not bullshit.
And frankly, the "facts" are that gay people tend to end up extremely fucked up. I'm gonna get some guff for that but.. there are folks who say 10% of the society is homosexual. That sounds high but.. fine. If 10% of the population is gay; I get the feeling that for 92% of those people it is a symptom of a greater problem rather than an actual orientation.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Intellivision want list
It was suggested I update my Intellivision want list. Here goes, along with my begging for forgiveness from my wife for jumping a gun. No funny links here, I just want to... to talk to everyone about what the 8 year old boy that's forever the core of my being wants.
Armor Battle: It was called armor ambush on the 2600. Not... not high priority. I think when Rich and I had it on the 2600 we played it twice. Sorry Mom, sorry Dad... it just didn't hit us.
Astrosmash: Why the heck don't I have this yet? It's not that it's fantastically great, but it's THE signature Mattel game. I mean I WANt it.. but I don't wanna pay a lot for it.
Beamrider: This is better than the arcade. What the heck, how did that happen? I remember a Christmas when my brother and I received a pile of "crap" Epyx games.. Street Sport Basketball, White Tiger, and some helicopter game. This reminds me of that Christmas and I don't know WHY!
Body Slam: Super Pro Wrestling: it's about on par with the second Smackdown on the PS1. That's not a bad thing, especially considering not a single developer of that game is older than this game.
Buzz Bomber: Y'know.. I won't throw it out of bed but... I'd throw a paper bag over it's head. Extra super plus craptacular is how the music stops every time any other sound effect goes on.
Championship Tennis: Barb and I enjoy the more worthless lesser tennis games on the system. No videos of it because people aren't gay enough to have played this game, apparently.
Chip Shot Super Pro Golf: I want it. Shut up.
Commando: Good luck finding it for less than $100. It might be better than the C-64 version. Emulation's... spotty, but it looks and feels promising. It almost HURTS to admit a version might be superior to the C64. Can't say for sure since the emulation can;t make it work right.. but...
Defender: The best classic system version, even better than the 5200... simply because it's easier but still pretty.
Dig Dug: My talent at this game got me into games in the first place. Shame the Inty version's so expensive.
Diner: Fun times. The more I play this on emulation the more I love it. It's the sequel to Burgertime, and one of the rare improved sequels.
Donkey Kong Jr.: I enjoy this game but.. money.. it tends to cost too much. On actual hardware the legs flicker correctly, not randomly vanish.
Dragonfire: If it's cheap.
Dreadnaught Factor: Was originally supposed to be a Star Wars game about the brave A-wing pilot who rammed the Executor. I salute him, and I salute this game.
Hover Force: Everyone hates this game. It's not the most exciting thing, but it manages to sustain a constant low level of interest. There's no up and down peak. A technical achievement to be sure, and one I want to have for lazy afternoons.
Ice Trek: It's pretty, very pretty, but not high priority. The guy in the video sucks at this game!
Motocross: Racing Destruction set. 'nuff said. Gimme gimme! No video, oddly, so have one of Racing Destruction Set instead. Same engine, only cars instead.
Nova Blast: Can't even get emulation to work. I hear good things? The video makes it look REALLY good.
PGA Golf: The other golf game's a lot better, but this still ain't garbage. Okay, I lied. It is.
Pac-Man: PLEASE. it even has the interludes.
Pinball: Remember how much I love Alien Crush? This is it without music.
Pitfall: Identical to the 2600. Get if cheap.
Popeye: I like the game.
Q-Bert: My wife will rape me.. but so what? It's fun to lose a fun game.
Royal Dealer: Whacky card games, nothing standard here. Others recommend it to me HEAVILY as a good game to pass time in the sticks... so I'm putting it here. No video. Weird.
River Raid: Everyone knows how I feel about this game. I currently am 4 places from "best in the world" at the 2600 version. In this one you can actually fly over the riverbanks!
Safecracker: Another that won't work for emulation but I hear good things about. No videos.
Shark Shark: Nakedly put, I hate that I don't already own this. Barb and I would play this forever.
Slam Dunk Super Pro Basketball: In depth sim.
Slap Shot: Super Pro Hockey: Plenty dump on this. I'd put it up in my top 20. Maybe I'm just too forgiving of Hockey. The video is someone's actual VHS from 1986.
Space Patrol: It's Moon Patrol, which I adore.. but so so so hard to find.
Spiker Super Pro Volleyball: I'm shocked. A fun volleyball game that's not on the Turbografx!
Stampede: I know my wife hates the game, but I like it.. and this is better than the 2600 version.
Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back: Shut the heck up. I like it. Video nearly unrelated, al things considered. Dude's got it hooked up wrong, wrong ratio... doesn't play..
Super Pro Football: This is greater than many PS2 football games. Cant find a video.
Swords and Serpents: Literally while writing this entry, I saw it for a great price and pounced. Turns out the game's worth about five times what I pounced on, so I don't feel bad at all. I just can't figure out who will be the wizard and who the warrior. No video.
Thin Ice: It's Winter Olympics themed. Can't find a video of this on real hardware, just that crappy NES on a chip plug and play.
Thunder Castle: Y'know what? Only if it's cheap. Pretty, but not really fun. The dude doing the video is an idiot.
Tower of Doom: I'd trade my carbine to have this game. Shut up.
Tron Solar Sailer and Maze-A-Tron: I love Tron. I love Tron a lot. These games suck, but I love Tron anyway. No video because.. you don't wanna see them.
Tropical Trouble: Beauty and the Beast's Sequel. Too expensive. Don't care.
Truckin': I like trucking games- YO DAWG this is Kanye West. I'mma let you finish but I wanted to say dat dis is one of the top tier; of all time. OF ALL TIME.
White Water: None too shabby. but.. coupla bucks at most.
Worm Whomper: Good midgrade fun. Probably will have good competitive appeal with the wife and I.
And.... a bonus game!
Armor Battle: It was called armor ambush on the 2600. Not... not high priority. I think when Rich and I had it on the 2600 we played it twice. Sorry Mom, sorry Dad... it just didn't hit us.
Astrosmash: Why the heck don't I have this yet? It's not that it's fantastically great, but it's THE signature Mattel game. I mean I WANt it.. but I don't wanna pay a lot for it.
Beamrider: This is better than the arcade. What the heck, how did that happen? I remember a Christmas when my brother and I received a pile of "crap" Epyx games.. Street Sport Basketball, White Tiger, and some helicopter game. This reminds me of that Christmas and I don't know WHY!
Body Slam: Super Pro Wrestling: it's about on par with the second Smackdown on the PS1. That's not a bad thing, especially considering not a single developer of that game is older than this game.
Buzz Bomber: Y'know.. I won't throw it out of bed but... I'd throw a paper bag over it's head. Extra super plus craptacular is how the music stops every time any other sound effect goes on.
Championship Tennis: Barb and I enjoy the more worthless lesser tennis games on the system. No videos of it because people aren't gay enough to have played this game, apparently.
Chip Shot Super Pro Golf: I want it. Shut up.
Commando: Good luck finding it for less than $100. It might be better than the C-64 version. Emulation's... spotty, but it looks and feels promising. It almost HURTS to admit a version might be superior to the C64. Can't say for sure since the emulation can;t make it work right.. but...
Defender: The best classic system version, even better than the 5200... simply because it's easier but still pretty.
Dig Dug: My talent at this game got me into games in the first place. Shame the Inty version's so expensive.
Diner: Fun times. The more I play this on emulation the more I love it. It's the sequel to Burgertime, and one of the rare improved sequels.
Donkey Kong Jr.: I enjoy this game but.. money.. it tends to cost too much. On actual hardware the legs flicker correctly, not randomly vanish.
Dragonfire: If it's cheap.
Dreadnaught Factor: Was originally supposed to be a Star Wars game about the brave A-wing pilot who rammed the Executor. I salute him, and I salute this game.
Hover Force: Everyone hates this game. It's not the most exciting thing, but it manages to sustain a constant low level of interest. There's no up and down peak. A technical achievement to be sure, and one I want to have for lazy afternoons.
Ice Trek: It's pretty, very pretty, but not high priority. The guy in the video sucks at this game!
Motocross: Racing Destruction set. 'nuff said. Gimme gimme! No video, oddly, so have one of Racing Destruction Set instead. Same engine, only cars instead.
Nova Blast: Can't even get emulation to work. I hear good things? The video makes it look REALLY good.
PGA Golf: The other golf game's a lot better, but this still ain't garbage. Okay, I lied. It is.
Pac-Man: PLEASE. it even has the interludes.
Pinball: Remember how much I love Alien Crush? This is it without music.
Pitfall: Identical to the 2600. Get if cheap.
Popeye: I like the game.
Q-Bert: My wife will rape me.. but so what? It's fun to lose a fun game.
Royal Dealer: Whacky card games, nothing standard here. Others recommend it to me HEAVILY as a good game to pass time in the sticks... so I'm putting it here. No video. Weird.
River Raid: Everyone knows how I feel about this game. I currently am 4 places from "best in the world" at the 2600 version. In this one you can actually fly over the riverbanks!
Safecracker: Another that won't work for emulation but I hear good things about. No videos.
Shark Shark: Nakedly put, I hate that I don't already own this. Barb and I would play this forever.
Slam Dunk Super Pro Basketball: In depth sim.
Slap Shot: Super Pro Hockey: Plenty dump on this. I'd put it up in my top 20. Maybe I'm just too forgiving of Hockey. The video is someone's actual VHS from 1986.
Space Patrol: It's Moon Patrol, which I adore.. but so so so hard to find.
Spiker Super Pro Volleyball: I'm shocked. A fun volleyball game that's not on the Turbografx!
Stampede: I know my wife hates the game, but I like it.. and this is better than the 2600 version.
Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back: Shut the heck up. I like it. Video nearly unrelated, al things considered. Dude's got it hooked up wrong, wrong ratio... doesn't play..
Super Pro Football: This is greater than many PS2 football games. Cant find a video.
Swords and Serpents: Literally while writing this entry, I saw it for a great price and pounced. Turns out the game's worth about five times what I pounced on, so I don't feel bad at all. I just can't figure out who will be the wizard and who the warrior. No video.
Thin Ice: It's Winter Olympics themed. Can't find a video of this on real hardware, just that crappy NES on a chip plug and play.
Thunder Castle: Y'know what? Only if it's cheap. Pretty, but not really fun. The dude doing the video is an idiot.
Tower of Doom: I'd trade my carbine to have this game. Shut up.
Tron Solar Sailer and Maze-A-Tron: I love Tron. I love Tron a lot. These games suck, but I love Tron anyway. No video because.. you don't wanna see them.
Tropical Trouble: Beauty and the Beast's Sequel. Too expensive. Don't care.
Truckin': I like trucking games- YO DAWG this is Kanye West. I'mma let you finish but I wanted to say dat dis is one of the top tier; of all time. OF ALL TIME.
White Water: None too shabby. but.. coupla bucks at most.
Worm Whomper: Good midgrade fun. Probably will have good competitive appeal with the wife and I.
And.... a bonus game!
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Intellivision
One thing that my readers will come to know about me is my obsession with old gaming, cartoons, and so on. I have long subscribed to the statement "you're never too old to have a happy childhood". I could whine about my past, an incomplete childhood, but why? There's no reason to dwell on the bad memories of the past, or you'll spend your entire life trying to rewrite what has gone before and never enjoy what's going on around you.
But try to recapture the past? Certainly!! I'm not entirely certain that's what I am trying to do since many modern day childish things attract me... but that's a post for another day. I'm here to talk about capturing a part of childhood I never had, but wish I did. Does that sound angsty? It shouldn't. The part of my childhood I would go back and change is nothing sad at all, simply a statement of accepting my own prior stupidity. I wish my parents had bought me Intellivision rather than the Atari 2600, and it was my own fault because they DID ask me. While the 2600 is certainly a lot of fun.. in fact I continue to play mine today, the Intellivision was more for the sort of child that I was. The 2600 was the "cool" system. It had all the arcade conversions and just.. tons of games.
You know what it did NOT have? Games with significant depth. About 5 or 6 years back, I discovered the Intellivision on a whim, wanting to try this "Dracula" game that never made it to the 2600. I couldn't figure the game out, decided it was garbage, and thought that would be the end of it. And for a few years, it was. I picked up some "Intellivision Lives" collections on principle, but never really paid much attention; until the fateful day I played it with Miba. On that day, two seeds were planted... one that led to the great love story which, in turn, leads me out into the woods to live my life as a hermit, and the other.. the Intellivision itself.
I decided that, as I was going out to the woods, retrogame collections for my DS would be priority. The first I ordered was Intellivision Lives on the DS, and I played it for.. as my wife can recall, three days almost nonstop. The games were just.. so in depth; not just for the time, but the complexity of them even holds up today. The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons games easily recreate the joy of those early, plot-less DnD games we all played. The DM made his dungeon maps, and we adventured through them... I had to play more. I found out the basketball game had you not just playing, but managing a team. The football game had you MAPPING OUT YOUR PLAYBOOK. It was.. simply amazing for a system released in 1979.
I had to have one. So I placed a bid on ebay.. and lo and behold I won! The system came and... I love it. I've opened it up a few times, replaced a few parts, and even bought a signal amp so it runs on my HDTV. I actually had to open the amp and back it off a little as well... still not perfect, but it works. Mostly, I've played as much of it as I can stand to, often to the exclusion of other things. I'm ecstatically happy with my Intellivision II, but I am eagerly looking forward to landing an original woodgrain Intellivision or, holy of holies, a System III. As far as gaming goes; they're the same system. Why do I want the other two instead? For simple reasons, my friends. The other systems are made of far more durable and easily replaced parts. Anyway, point is, you can expect me to write little rants about Inty games here and there. You'll hear from me about my 2600 and my Amiga as well... but at least for a while here, the Intellivision will be the belle of the ball.
Also, did you know it was the first 16 bit system ever made? Stick that in your Genesis and smoke it.
But try to recapture the past? Certainly!! I'm not entirely certain that's what I am trying to do since many modern day childish things attract me... but that's a post for another day. I'm here to talk about capturing a part of childhood I never had, but wish I did. Does that sound angsty? It shouldn't. The part of my childhood I would go back and change is nothing sad at all, simply a statement of accepting my own prior stupidity. I wish my parents had bought me Intellivision rather than the Atari 2600, and it was my own fault because they DID ask me. While the 2600 is certainly a lot of fun.. in fact I continue to play mine today, the Intellivision was more for the sort of child that I was. The 2600 was the "cool" system. It had all the arcade conversions and just.. tons of games.
You know what it did NOT have? Games with significant depth. About 5 or 6 years back, I discovered the Intellivision on a whim, wanting to try this "Dracula" game that never made it to the 2600. I couldn't figure the game out, decided it was garbage, and thought that would be the end of it. And for a few years, it was. I picked up some "Intellivision Lives" collections on principle, but never really paid much attention; until the fateful day I played it with Miba. On that day, two seeds were planted... one that led to the great love story which, in turn, leads me out into the woods to live my life as a hermit, and the other.. the Intellivision itself.
I decided that, as I was going out to the woods, retrogame collections for my DS would be priority. The first I ordered was Intellivision Lives on the DS, and I played it for.. as my wife can recall, three days almost nonstop. The games were just.. so in depth; not just for the time, but the complexity of them even holds up today. The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons games easily recreate the joy of those early, plot-less DnD games we all played. The DM made his dungeon maps, and we adventured through them... I had to play more. I found out the basketball game had you not just playing, but managing a team. The football game had you MAPPING OUT YOUR PLAYBOOK. It was.. simply amazing for a system released in 1979.
I had to have one. So I placed a bid on ebay.. and lo and behold I won! The system came and... I love it. I've opened it up a few times, replaced a few parts, and even bought a signal amp so it runs on my HDTV. I actually had to open the amp and back it off a little as well... still not perfect, but it works. Mostly, I've played as much of it as I can stand to, often to the exclusion of other things. I'm ecstatically happy with my Intellivision II, but I am eagerly looking forward to landing an original woodgrain Intellivision or, holy of holies, a System III. As far as gaming goes; they're the same system. Why do I want the other two instead? For simple reasons, my friends. The other systems are made of far more durable and easily replaced parts. Anyway, point is, you can expect me to write little rants about Inty games here and there. You'll hear from me about my 2600 and my Amiga as well... but at least for a while here, the Intellivision will be the belle of the ball.
Also, did you know it was the first 16 bit system ever made? Stick that in your Genesis and smoke it.
Somalian Piracy
Short Version
When you screw over the poor people long enough, they eventually turn to what's initially called "crime" and later move onto something called "revolution".
Long Version:
Do I believe we should be sending the military down to crush the pirates? Absolutely. Kill them all. They crossed a line. However, with justice must come compassion.
If there wasn't such abject poverty in Somalia, there would not be such piracy. While mercilessly capturing and executing pirates, we should also be doing something to ease the situation which guaranteed the people would have to turn to piracy. If you are downtrodden and poor long enough it makes sense to develop hatred. After all, the spoiled rich lazy people have the spare money to be taking luxury cruises while the people in your town can't even feed themselves. Their greed, decadence, and unwillingness to share murders people in your neighborhood every day.
What we call "innocent people" they call "inhuman monsters willfully ignoring the plight of their fellow men". It's all a matter of perspective. And you know what? They're not that far from wrong, either. You don't exactly make yacht money by being fair and generous with your fellow man. Speaking as a citizen of the US, I've yet to meet a single wealthy person who has not made significant moral compromises that the Jesus they follow would not approve of to get where they are.
Does this mean they are evil persons? Not necessarily, but they're certainly not "innocent". When the family is captured and executed as a whole, did some innocent people get harmed? Quite likely. When a corporate exec cuts jobs but wouldn't even consider taking a 5% pay cut to save dozens of those jobs a whole lot of innocent persons are harmed as well. From the Somali pirates' point of view, NOT killing these folks will bring even more hardship on their friends and families. Ransom schemes are a lot harder to get away with than killing someone and pawning their stuff.
It's childish to draw the world as black and white as most do.
There is more than enough in the way of resources in this world for everyone, absolutely everyone alive today, to have a house and enough food to eat, but instead there's a constant worldwide vacuum from those who have the least to those who have the most.
Only a few hundred years ago, some folks left countries to found new ones, yet found themselves being strangled by taxes. The first actions in response to that were referred to as "crimes" as well. Rather than address the actual issues at hand, those with the wealth simply said "fuck it, kill anyone who disobeys", and so what's now referred to as the "American Revolution" happened. Our forefathers absolutely engaged in highjacking, terrorism, piracy, and yes even murder of "innocents" to make this country what it is today.
Why can't people learn from history? I have heard folks say "they LIKE being poor."
When all you have is the culture you find in poor neighborhoods, you will show pride in your culture. It's human nature to want to feel good about your tribe. Statements like "they WANT to be poor" only exacerbate that situation. At absolutely no point should one ever turn their back on the poor. At absolutely every point you should give them the resources to become sufficient, and if they take advantage of you give again. And again and again until there remains nothing left but for them to realize everything's gonna be okay, and then help them work to better everyone. Will there be parasites still? Always. As parasites continue to take advantage of you on the low end of the economic scale as there are parasites on the high end.
There will always be greed. That's part of human nature. The question is, are you man enough to rise above it?
When you screw over the poor people long enough, they eventually turn to what's initially called "crime" and later move onto something called "revolution".
Long Version:
Do I believe we should be sending the military down to crush the pirates? Absolutely. Kill them all. They crossed a line. However, with justice must come compassion.
If there wasn't such abject poverty in Somalia, there would not be such piracy. While mercilessly capturing and executing pirates, we should also be doing something to ease the situation which guaranteed the people would have to turn to piracy. If you are downtrodden and poor long enough it makes sense to develop hatred. After all, the spoiled rich lazy people have the spare money to be taking luxury cruises while the people in your town can't even feed themselves. Their greed, decadence, and unwillingness to share murders people in your neighborhood every day.
What we call "innocent people" they call "inhuman monsters willfully ignoring the plight of their fellow men". It's all a matter of perspective. And you know what? They're not that far from wrong, either. You don't exactly make yacht money by being fair and generous with your fellow man. Speaking as a citizen of the US, I've yet to meet a single wealthy person who has not made significant moral compromises that the Jesus they follow would not approve of to get where they are.
Does this mean they are evil persons? Not necessarily, but they're certainly not "innocent". When the family is captured and executed as a whole, did some innocent people get harmed? Quite likely. When a corporate exec cuts jobs but wouldn't even consider taking a 5% pay cut to save dozens of those jobs a whole lot of innocent persons are harmed as well. From the Somali pirates' point of view, NOT killing these folks will bring even more hardship on their friends and families. Ransom schemes are a lot harder to get away with than killing someone and pawning their stuff.
It's childish to draw the world as black and white as most do.
There is more than enough in the way of resources in this world for everyone, absolutely everyone alive today, to have a house and enough food to eat, but instead there's a constant worldwide vacuum from those who have the least to those who have the most.
Only a few hundred years ago, some folks left countries to found new ones, yet found themselves being strangled by taxes. The first actions in response to that were referred to as "crimes" as well. Rather than address the actual issues at hand, those with the wealth simply said "fuck it, kill anyone who disobeys", and so what's now referred to as the "American Revolution" happened. Our forefathers absolutely engaged in highjacking, terrorism, piracy, and yes even murder of "innocents" to make this country what it is today.
Why can't people learn from history? I have heard folks say "they LIKE being poor."
When all you have is the culture you find in poor neighborhoods, you will show pride in your culture. It's human nature to want to feel good about your tribe. Statements like "they WANT to be poor" only exacerbate that situation. At absolutely no point should one ever turn their back on the poor. At absolutely every point you should give them the resources to become sufficient, and if they take advantage of you give again. And again and again until there remains nothing left but for them to realize everything's gonna be okay, and then help them work to better everyone. Will there be parasites still? Always. As parasites continue to take advantage of you on the low end of the economic scale as there are parasites on the high end.
There will always be greed. That's part of human nature. The question is, are you man enough to rise above it?
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Garlic and medicine
Garlic has many wonderful uses. It is good for helping to prevent several forms of cancer, it lessens arterial hardening due to cholesterol in persons who are not already at a high level, it's a known vasodilator, and it's a great expectorant. It is a wonderful topical antibiotic, and when used as such is even a lowlevel antiviral compound.
What it is not, however, is an internal antibiotic. Your stomach acid promptly breaks down the polysulfides (which give it the topical usage) into the vasodilative compound mentioned above.
Let's make this crystal clear: garlic is a wonderful TOPICAL antibiotic. A garlic compound spray could work better than even Bactine.. just remember to wipe it off after a bit or allow it to absorb into a bandage rather than spray directly on a wound. In fact, it's often overkill to leave it on a potentially infective entry point for too long because it will also kill healthy cells in high enough concentration. Ingesting garlic has absolutely no antibiotic properties of any kind; that is nonsense. People are mistaking it's properties as a vasodilator and expectorant for antibiotic ones. Garlic treats the symptoms of bacterial infections internally, it absolutely does NOT treat the cause.
Just because it's making you feel better does not mean it is actually making you better. That said, feeling better IS important for recovery, when you are happy your immune system works better, but that does not make garlic an internal antibiotic any more than chicken soup is an internal antiviral. These particular folk remedies ease you and comfort you, which allows your immune system to do it's job better; nothing more. Reading your favorite book and avoiding stress would do the same job and better.
I suppose in theory if injected it would be an internal antibiotic... but "biotic" means "living thing". It'll happily kill friendly cells as well as unfriendly ones. I'm not willing to risk it any more than I would ingest the necessary amount of silver to suspend in my flesh to create a small internal antibiotic use. Your skin will be grey long before you derive any usage of it.
Allow me to go more in depth about how internal antibiotics work. Read this part carefully. Internal antibiotics generally do NOT directly kill the infection! In fact, most are simply bacteriostatic. The ingested compounds enter your bloodstream and slow the growth of the bacteria. That's all they do, slow down the bacterial growth and reproductive cycle.
Bactericidal substances (such as lysol, bactine, garlic, silver) do destroy bacteria, but they do so by permeating their cellular walls and causing effects ranging from not allowing the bacteria to take in needed nutrients or oxygen, to flatout drying the bacteria out until they die. Now, I will back this off a bit. In high enough concentrations, most bacteriostatics are also bactericidal. However, that is an incidental sideffect, it is your own immune system doing the work with the bacteriostatic aid that helps you get better.
Bactericidal compounds are topical. Bacteriostatic compounds are internal. An easy way to remember it is this: if it works when you rub it on, it invariably has little to NO use when ingested.
Everyone knows that pouring alcohol on a wound will cleanse it. Everyone also knows that drinking alcohol has no internal antibiotic properties (beyond the throat). You don't swallow lysol pills, you don't drink your antibacterial soap. It's almost frightening quackery to claim garlic or silver are any different. The human body simply does not work that way. Anyone who says otherwise is willfully ignoring thousands of years of evidence to the contrary, most of it from the _exact same old sources_ they claim backs their quackery. You might as well talk about the amazing benefits of mercury while you're at it, cause that's something they used to give people doses of in the "old days" as well as an antibiotic, simply because it was a decent topical antiseptic.
What it is not, however, is an internal antibiotic. Your stomach acid promptly breaks down the polysulfides (which give it the topical usage) into the vasodilative compound mentioned above.
Let's make this crystal clear: garlic is a wonderful TOPICAL antibiotic. A garlic compound spray could work better than even Bactine.. just remember to wipe it off after a bit or allow it to absorb into a bandage rather than spray directly on a wound. In fact, it's often overkill to leave it on a potentially infective entry point for too long because it will also kill healthy cells in high enough concentration. Ingesting garlic has absolutely no antibiotic properties of any kind; that is nonsense. People are mistaking it's properties as a vasodilator and expectorant for antibiotic ones. Garlic treats the symptoms of bacterial infections internally, it absolutely does NOT treat the cause.
Just because it's making you feel better does not mean it is actually making you better. That said, feeling better IS important for recovery, when you are happy your immune system works better, but that does not make garlic an internal antibiotic any more than chicken soup is an internal antiviral. These particular folk remedies ease you and comfort you, which allows your immune system to do it's job better; nothing more. Reading your favorite book and avoiding stress would do the same job and better.
I suppose in theory if injected it would be an internal antibiotic... but "biotic" means "living thing". It'll happily kill friendly cells as well as unfriendly ones. I'm not willing to risk it any more than I would ingest the necessary amount of silver to suspend in my flesh to create a small internal antibiotic use. Your skin will be grey long before you derive any usage of it.
Allow me to go more in depth about how internal antibiotics work. Read this part carefully. Internal antibiotics generally do NOT directly kill the infection! In fact, most are simply bacteriostatic. The ingested compounds enter your bloodstream and slow the growth of the bacteria. That's all they do, slow down the bacterial growth and reproductive cycle.
Bactericidal substances (such as lysol, bactine, garlic, silver) do destroy bacteria, but they do so by permeating their cellular walls and causing effects ranging from not allowing the bacteria to take in needed nutrients or oxygen, to flatout drying the bacteria out until they die. Now, I will back this off a bit. In high enough concentrations, most bacteriostatics are also bactericidal. However, that is an incidental sideffect, it is your own immune system doing the work with the bacteriostatic aid that helps you get better.
Bactericidal compounds are topical. Bacteriostatic compounds are internal. An easy way to remember it is this: if it works when you rub it on, it invariably has little to NO use when ingested.
Everyone knows that pouring alcohol on a wound will cleanse it. Everyone also knows that drinking alcohol has no internal antibiotic properties (beyond the throat). You don't swallow lysol pills, you don't drink your antibacterial soap. It's almost frightening quackery to claim garlic or silver are any different. The human body simply does not work that way. Anyone who says otherwise is willfully ignoring thousands of years of evidence to the contrary, most of it from the _exact same old sources_ they claim backs their quackery. You might as well talk about the amazing benefits of mercury while you're at it, cause that's something they used to give people doses of in the "old days" as well as an antibiotic, simply because it was a decent topical antiseptic.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
More science-like misconceptions.
Sometimes you will hear things about light being the absolute limit at which information can be transmitted., and causality. The speed of light has nothing at all to do with causality. From such nonsense comes the pseudo-science people call "Quantum Mechanics". Travelling faster than another beings relative speed of light won't make you see events before they happen. There is no speed of information; period. None. Of any sort, whatsoever. There is only speed of perceiving events.
While we're at it, people like to misunderstand Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as well. Light particles knock around subatomic particles, all he was saying is that it's impossible to observe CERTAIN events without disrupting the "no light" version of the outcome. It means that, as of right now, we are uncertain about how certain particles behave because we have no non-obstrusive way to observe them yet.
Some scientists like to read that as "observation changes outcome" and start extrapolating nonsense from it. Schroedinger's Cat is actually an exercise to demonstrate how absurd this line of thought is, not to provide layman's proof of "transfer of information" or "alternate probability outcomes".
Ludicrous Speed!
"Is there any definitive proof that we can't travel faster than the speed of light?"
None whatsoever and Einstein never said it was an unbreakable barrier. Light is just a particle, and we can vary it's speed with gravitational forces. I've often spent my life wondering why people read more into what Einstein said than he did. The extreme layman's terms is this: he theorizes that light appears as a constant TO YOU no matter what speed you're travelling. You can easily be travelling, relativistically speaking, faster than the speed of light from another observer's standpoint but you can never travel faster than light from your own perception, because you'd necessarily be disrupting it at your base speed always. Remember we do not see light, we see deviations in it and reflections of it.
Have you ever been in a car travelling 60 MPH and thrown a ball to another person in the front seat? To you, the ball's maybe going 5 MPH; it is, in fact, going the "speed of thrown ball". However, the "speed of thrown ball" to you would be oh... 65 MPH to someone standing on the roadside observing only your ball.
None whatsoever and Einstein never said it was an unbreakable barrier. Light is just a particle, and we can vary it's speed with gravitational forces. I've often spent my life wondering why people read more into what Einstein said than he did. The extreme layman's terms is this: he theorizes that light appears as a constant TO YOU no matter what speed you're travelling. You can easily be travelling, relativistically speaking, faster than the speed of light from another observer's standpoint but you can never travel faster than light from your own perception, because you'd necessarily be disrupting it at your base speed always. Remember we do not see light, we see deviations in it and reflections of it.
Have you ever been in a car travelling 60 MPH and thrown a ball to another person in the front seat? To you, the ball's maybe going 5 MPH; it is, in fact, going the "speed of thrown ball". However, the "speed of thrown ball" to you would be oh... 65 MPH to someone standing on the roadside observing only your ball.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
On Gaming
I read this in a thread elsewhere about why Microsoft made their Kinect and Sony their Wiimote and Nunchuk Move
"Why wouldn't Sony and Microsoft want a piece of the braindead sheep market ? "
Sony has controlled that market since PS1 days. What Nintendo did was make gaming a widespread affair again, like it had been up until halfway through PS1 days. Sony has you convinced that playing games as if they were your job makes you "hardcore". It does not, it makes you sad and pathetic. Gaming on video systems was, at one time, like any other hobby; working on models, board games, playing impromptu baseball with the guys.. it was something you do in your leisure time. There have always been people who take hobbies far too seriously, they have unbalanced lives. As it should be, these obsessions are looked at askance.
We are the true core of gaming. Sony simply has a vocal minority convinced that it's normal to forgo a life in favor of a hobby. So long as Nintendo continues to find fun things for us to do with our friends... REAL friends not just anonymous names on a contact list, and fun things to do when you can snatch moments of spare time... Nintendo will always be around. And Nintendo has always (post Atari)been on top. "Portable" gaming is not a magical different category, it's all video gaming. The systems that have sold the most have always had Nintendo's name on them, except for the days of Atari. The Sony PS1 did not outsell the GBA. The DS outsold the PS2 (and obviously XBox), but I'll be darned if Sony and Microsoft didn't go through contortions to try to play that fact down. The Gamecube? Ugh. They shot themselves in the foot not releasing the model with a fullsize DVD player, if it weren't for their core designers working hard on their other systems, that piece of junk woulda hurt them.
Hobbies are not a lifestyle, they're hobbies. Just because you're not part of the main herd does not mean you're not brainless, unthinking followers. Sony (and to a lesser extent, Microsoft) has you herd of black sheep convinced that it's healthy to spend 30+ hours a week hiding from the real world in a hobby. You are told that it's a badge of pride to be "hardcore" into gaming, despite it providing no advancement, and you swallow it up and line up in the pasture to be fleeced by the next time sink. You play the same three games over and over, afraid to try something new, afraid to innovate, afraid to be challenged. When something different comes along, you dismiss it as "casual" like it's a bad thing when adults treat a leisure activity as a leisure activity. Nintendo will continue to innovate like it has since they first took a chance on this "arcade" media when they were a small card game company in Japan, and everyone else will continue to play catchup.
Also, anyone noticed how sad and pathetic gaming magazines are getting? "PS3 sold more during this month than the Wii did!" and all the sad and lonely people who treat gaming as a lifestyle rather than a hobby rejoice, even while claiming sales don't matter. Game Informer's statements were the funniest "If this trend continues, in the next 3 years the PS3 will outsell the Wii!"
So which is it guys? Do sales not matter or are the HD consoles are inherently superior, which is why the sales are "finally" starting to catch up? Are Sony and Microsoft showing Nintendo how motion control should be done (three years later) or are they grabbing a "piece of that casual pie"? Are you the "real" gamers, part of some "silent majority", or are you the minority oppressed by the masses?
28 years ago, my father, Grandfather, and I played Atari 2600. My father hung with me until SNES days, but darn it the PS1 stopped being a fun social activity. Sure, there were deep time consuming games in all generations until then, but plenty to do with your whole family. Not so once Sony got on board. The PS2? Forget it. Litte to do with your friends, much less your family.
Gaming has come full circle again, and I can see my wife, her parents, and our future children playing the Wii 2. Thank the Sun that gaming has gone back to they way it was always supposed to be... I want to have fun times with my kids... not argue about who gets to use the TV to play the latest RPG or FPS for hours at a time.
"Why wouldn't Sony and Microsoft want a piece of the braindead sheep market ? "
Sony has controlled that market since PS1 days. What Nintendo did was make gaming a widespread affair again, like it had been up until halfway through PS1 days. Sony has you convinced that playing games as if they were your job makes you "hardcore". It does not, it makes you sad and pathetic. Gaming on video systems was, at one time, like any other hobby; working on models, board games, playing impromptu baseball with the guys.. it was something you do in your leisure time. There have always been people who take hobbies far too seriously, they have unbalanced lives. As it should be, these obsessions are looked at askance.
We are the true core of gaming. Sony simply has a vocal minority convinced that it's normal to forgo a life in favor of a hobby. So long as Nintendo continues to find fun things for us to do with our friends... REAL friends not just anonymous names on a contact list, and fun things to do when you can snatch moments of spare time... Nintendo will always be around. And Nintendo has always (post Atari)been on top. "Portable" gaming is not a magical different category, it's all video gaming. The systems that have sold the most have always had Nintendo's name on them, except for the days of Atari. The Sony PS1 did not outsell the GBA. The DS outsold the PS2 (and obviously XBox), but I'll be darned if Sony and Microsoft didn't go through contortions to try to play that fact down. The Gamecube? Ugh. They shot themselves in the foot not releasing the model with a fullsize DVD player, if it weren't for their core designers working hard on their other systems, that piece of junk woulda hurt them.
Hobbies are not a lifestyle, they're hobbies. Just because you're not part of the main herd does not mean you're not brainless, unthinking followers. Sony (and to a lesser extent, Microsoft) has you herd of black sheep convinced that it's healthy to spend 30+ hours a week hiding from the real world in a hobby. You are told that it's a badge of pride to be "hardcore" into gaming, despite it providing no advancement, and you swallow it up and line up in the pasture to be fleeced by the next time sink. You play the same three games over and over, afraid to try something new, afraid to innovate, afraid to be challenged. When something different comes along, you dismiss it as "casual" like it's a bad thing when adults treat a leisure activity as a leisure activity. Nintendo will continue to innovate like it has since they first took a chance on this "arcade" media when they were a small card game company in Japan, and everyone else will continue to play catchup.
Also, anyone noticed how sad and pathetic gaming magazines are getting? "PS3 sold more during this month than the Wii did!" and all the sad and lonely people who treat gaming as a lifestyle rather than a hobby rejoice, even while claiming sales don't matter. Game Informer's statements were the funniest "If this trend continues, in the next 3 years the PS3 will outsell the Wii!"
So which is it guys? Do sales not matter or are the HD consoles are inherently superior, which is why the sales are "finally" starting to catch up? Are Sony and Microsoft showing Nintendo how motion control should be done (three years later) or are they grabbing a "piece of that casual pie"? Are you the "real" gamers, part of some "silent majority", or are you the minority oppressed by the masses?
28 years ago, my father, Grandfather, and I played Atari 2600. My father hung with me until SNES days, but darn it the PS1 stopped being a fun social activity. Sure, there were deep time consuming games in all generations until then, but plenty to do with your whole family. Not so once Sony got on board. The PS2? Forget it. Litte to do with your friends, much less your family.
Gaming has come full circle again, and I can see my wife, her parents, and our future children playing the Wii 2. Thank the Sun that gaming has gone back to they way it was always supposed to be... I want to have fun times with my kids... not argue about who gets to use the TV to play the latest RPG or FPS for hours at a time.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
And it marches on
We got a nice propane stove/range combo unit a few days back. I'll link it with an affiliate ID and so on later, but for now.. we haven't tried it yet, but I like it. It fits a 9x13 pan, and has two racks, so it can go just about anything. The gas for it will be so phenomenally cheap it will actually be more affordable to start using it NOW than to use our electric range. Even averaging out for heating cycles, the electric range uses one entire kilowatt hour in 15 minutes flat! That means the thing costs us 12 cents just to properly pre-heat. To compare, it takes my computer two and a half hours of hardcore intense gaming to use one kilowatt hour of power.
By my calculations, using the propane instead will save us almost 40% over using electricity. The oven, the dryer and the water heater are the biggest power consumers around. I'm considering getting a solar shower bag for doing dishes (and possibly showering!) to save money there as well. The propane oven has me all excited again, and I may have to steal cooking duties back form my wife. She decides WHAT we eat, I cook it. Cooking with propane is an art form, and one I am eager to learn. Took care of Valentine's Day shopping today, and SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER. So SPOILER and then SPOILER! Lol. Took forever to find what I wanted, in other words. Picked up my wife's new Green Rider book today, The Black Veil. I ran into the former best friend of one of my ex's, she checked me out. She messed it up, just as stupid as Juliana herself was, and charged me for the book. I had to come back with the receipt pointing out we had already paid for it and get a full refund. No way in heck will I pay $30 for a book we got for $10! No worries, it enabled me to get the last thing I needed for the big holiday.
Got volume 2 of A Dance in the Vampire Bund as well. Can't wait to read it. I'm thinking hot coca, a snack, and then Miba and I dash to our respective reading holes and read.
By my calculations, using the propane instead will save us almost 40% over using electricity. The oven, the dryer and the water heater are the biggest power consumers around. I'm considering getting a solar shower bag for doing dishes (and possibly showering!) to save money there as well. The propane oven has me all excited again, and I may have to steal cooking duties back form my wife. She decides WHAT we eat, I cook it. Cooking with propane is an art form, and one I am eager to learn. Took care of Valentine's Day shopping today, and SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER. So SPOILER and then SPOILER! Lol. Took forever to find what I wanted, in other words. Picked up my wife's new Green Rider book today, The Black Veil. I ran into the former best friend of one of my ex's, she checked me out. She messed it up, just as stupid as Juliana herself was, and charged me for the book. I had to come back with the receipt pointing out we had already paid for it and get a full refund. No way in heck will I pay $30 for a book we got for $10! No worries, it enabled me to get the last thing I needed for the big holiday.
Got volume 2 of A Dance in the Vampire Bund as well. Can't wait to read it. I'm thinking hot coca, a snack, and then Miba and I dash to our respective reading holes and read.
Friday, February 4, 2011
War
Young men aren't seasoned enough to know what's actually worth fighting for, but old men who have never lifted arms are awfully good at using jingoism to convince them to die on their behalf.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Let's do this thing!
Well, here it is. My wife began her blog, at a site with a similar name, and I felt it was time for me to get on board. Miba, as she prefers to be called, and I, are very different people. She loves Star Wars, obsessively. Me? I have a pantheon, of which three are called my "holy trinity" which is somewhat subject to change. Right now we're rocking along with Robotech, Tron, and.. so help me something modern has entered the list.. I'm really liking Dance in the Vampire Bund. There's one thing that goes above all else... and you can probably guess from the image I chose. Christmas. I love Christmas.
Christmas is not just an entertainment preference, it is above all else. I'll speak of other interests, but I would give them all up just to have something red and green on me at all times. I'm not perfect... I come from a violent past which causes me to have weird hangups here and there, but I do my best to, as the song from Garfield's Christmas says, keep Christmas Eve in my heart at all times. I don't often succeed, but here we are.
I won't blather about what we are doing here as an intro... Miba will handle that nicely. What I want to talk about will be politics, science, and so help me what it feels like to be a man with his identity so compromised that, after 7 years of trying to convince government agencies that he is not the Mexican in prison, that he decided it was time to get away from it all. To throw the bird at the life he never understood and can't fit into anyway, and do what he needs to in order to be a man. Welcome, my friends.. look around, not much here yet, but perhaps you'd enjoy my radio station?
I've spent my time as a high school dropout, a minimum wage slave, a professional wrestler, a teacher's assistant, I've served my country as a sailor and so help me I've used parts of my body in ways I'm not proud of to survive. I've strung out on illegal substances, I've bloodied my knuckles for food, and I've been all around the country, but that's over now. I've fought all my adult life, and it's never amounted to anything more than a body full of scars, contrary memories, and aches and pains when it rains. One pretty girl came to fetch me as her man, and show me what kind of future I can have. I've been everywhere, done everything... but I've never had direction before. She showed me the way.
I am Sohei Fox.... and this is my journey down... no.. my journey UP... a path to freedom.
Christmas is not just an entertainment preference, it is above all else. I'll speak of other interests, but I would give them all up just to have something red and green on me at all times. I'm not perfect... I come from a violent past which causes me to have weird hangups here and there, but I do my best to, as the song from Garfield's Christmas says, keep Christmas Eve in my heart at all times. I don't often succeed, but here we are.
I won't blather about what we are doing here as an intro... Miba will handle that nicely. What I want to talk about will be politics, science, and so help me what it feels like to be a man with his identity so compromised that, after 7 years of trying to convince government agencies that he is not the Mexican in prison, that he decided it was time to get away from it all. To throw the bird at the life he never understood and can't fit into anyway, and do what he needs to in order to be a man. Welcome, my friends.. look around, not much here yet, but perhaps you'd enjoy my radio station?
I've spent my time as a high school dropout, a minimum wage slave, a professional wrestler, a teacher's assistant, I've served my country as a sailor and so help me I've used parts of my body in ways I'm not proud of to survive. I've strung out on illegal substances, I've bloodied my knuckles for food, and I've been all around the country, but that's over now. I've fought all my adult life, and it's never amounted to anything more than a body full of scars, contrary memories, and aches and pains when it rains. One pretty girl came to fetch me as her man, and show me what kind of future I can have. I've been everywhere, done everything... but I've never had direction before. She showed me the way.
I am Sohei Fox.... and this is my journey down... no.. my journey UP... a path to freedom.
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