Archive for November, 2008
Thursday, November 27th, 2008
Test of Taste
I figured out a foolproof method of determining whether or not someone has horrible taste.
1. Do you like movies with the actor Jason Statham starring as a lead role?
A. Yes.
B. No.
If you answered “Yes”, then you can rest easy, as you have absolutely no taste whatsoever. Jason Statham is the most horrifyingly bad thing to happen to cinema since J.J. Abrams crawled out of the ocean with a god damned shakey cam and cgi rig. I hate Jason Statham with an unbridled passion.
Why, I hear you ask? The accent. If you discard the fact that he has “starred” in row after row of formulaic action thriller drek, somehow PRETENDING to be a sex symbol, the accent stands out as the most hideous grating thing I’ve ever had the displeasure to aurally receive. Normally, I love English accents. Posh, Cockney, West Country, Scouse, hell, even Welsh with its ninety-five useless “L’s”. But whatever the hell Statham is spitting out of his face I do not like.
When Statham talks, it…it sounds like someone gave the voice actor of the recent Beowulf a peanut butter sandwich with razor blades in it. “MAOIH nayme is Chefv CHAYE-oss.” Try saying that with your mouth displaying as many possible teeth as you can while uttering the syllables and you’ve pretty much got it down, except for the unjustified confidence that borders on the Kevin Federline side of things. Ugh.
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
The Heterosexual Questionnaire
Saw this and just had to add it here. This questionnaire was created back in 1972 to put heterosexual folks in the shoes of gay folks for a brief moment. Many questions and assumptions about gays that are unfair are reversed in this and asked instead to a hypothetical straight person.
1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?
2. When and where did you decide you were a heterosexual?
3. Is it possible this is just a phase and you will out grow it?
4. Is it possible that your sexual orientation has stemmed from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex?
5. Do your parents know you are straight? Do your friends know? How did they react?
6. If you have never slept with a person of the same sex, is it just possible that all you need is a good gay lover?
7. Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality… can’t you just be who you are and keep it quiet?
8. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex?
9. Why do heterosexuals try to recruit others into this lifestyle?
10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexual… Do you consider it safe to expose children to heterosexual teachers?
11. Just what do men and women do in bed together? How can they truly know how to please each other, being so anatomically different?
12. With all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiraling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals?
13. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality?
14. Considering the menace of overpopulation, how could the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual?
15. Could you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don’t you feel that he or she might be inclined to influence you in the direction of his or her leanings?
16. There seem to very few happy heterosexuals. Techniques have been developed that might enable you to change if you really want to. Would you be willing to give such a thing a chance?
17. Have you considered trying aversion therapy?
Friday, November 21st, 2008
Quick Review
Quick review - after playing this game, I absolutely must recommend it to everyone. World of Goo is so damned elegant, there aren’t any comparisons short of Portal. Best game I’ve played this year so far. Five freaking stars. The music is wonderful, the art style is something out of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, the puzzles are ingenius, and the narrative is a smattering of dark humor. This is a gem of a game and not to be missed.
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
Crude Addiction
Dealers and Users have a very unique symbiosis between them. The Dealer provides, the User uses. Typically, this relationship follows a direct supply and demand curve, but oftentimes the Dealer will artificially create shortfalls in supply or increase cost based on overwhelming demand to maximize profit. This is a natural dance, and it is one that this nation has been doing with oil for decades now.
Only recently has the country become truly aware of the narcotic-like qualities our dealer/user relationship regarding oil has taken on. Take a look at the past 8 years. Perspective is everything, and when Dubs, a failed oil man in the pockets of the Saudis and Halliburtonians took office, gas was a buck and a half a gallon. Gasoline was cheap and a secondary thought in the budgetary considerations of millions of Americans. Transportation taken for granted.
Over those 8 years though, they, and by “they” I mean OPEC and Veep Cheney’s friends, gradually raised the price of oil, sneaking it up a dime when no one was looking. Up a scooch because of “turmoil in the middle east” and “reduced refining capacity”. These excuses, which we swallowed coated in that thick oil slick, gave oil companies carte blanche to fiddle with prices. Oil companies have been making ungodly amounts of money for the past 8 years, record-shattering profits never before seen in the world market being made at the expense of us, the oil-addicted user.
That outcry reached its peak this year when gas tipped out at $4.25 a gallon. Oil companies at that point began to detect that perhaps they had indeed gone too far. An undercurrent of enraged citizens suddenly found their personal policies shifting towards practicality - a determined shift in destroying the hold oil has over this country. This confluence of concern is one of the big reasons Republicans, longtime pruned in husbandry to Big Oil, were swept out of power.
Big Oil, like the Insurance Companies, got scared of this movement about a year ago and started putting together TV ads. Well hey, did you know that BP is *actually* championing the move to greener energy? And did you know that ExxonMobil labs are among the leading national research institutions aimed at cleaner use of fossil fuels and more affordable solar energy? Right. And Phillip Morris would please like for you and your children to stop smoking.
At $4.25, we did not believe them. We’re not really too interested in hearing what solutions the Oil Companies have for solving our addiction to Oil. That’s the equivalent of McDonald’s starting up their own Anti-Obesity Diet Program, or the Krispy Kreme fight against Diabetes. Oil has one other tactic that they can, and are employing. A horrible one. Probably the worst.
Up the street at the Murphy Station attached to the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Store, gasoline is $1.92 a gallon. It will likely continue to drop. Why? Because while we as a nation are collectively on the verge of starting a 12-step, a new shipment just came in, and our dealer wants to offer its repeat customers first crack at some of the quality stuff. Cheap. You know, like old times, when we first started this “business” relationship.
And while we are suckin’ down the sweet, rich crude for pennies on the dollar, our rage subsides and our resolution to get off this shit weakens. What grave, national impetus is there to leave something so satisfying, so cheap. It’s time to go on that roadtrip or buy the SUV you’d had your eye on. One more hit, a little one. It can’t hurt.
Saturday, November 8th, 2008
Ultima Online: Resurrection
Ultima Online bore me and several of my fellow Community Managers. As the first MMO and the grand-daddy of virtual worlds, it spawned a generation of personae communitatus that affect practically every MMO in existence.
For nearly ten years, I have played Ultima Online in some form. I have known many greats, players who themselves moved on or even joined the gaming industry because of their experiences in UO. Rainbow King, Grishnak, Navrip, Nikademus, Aleph Aeirs, Azalin, Perianwyr, Dragons, Dayel, Kieron, Talanithus.
I consider myself a custodian of sorts, last of the storied ancients who made their home amongst the shards of Sosaria. In distant, but paternal measure, I login as GreyPawn and futz about with the new features or items periodically added, always a good quarter-shy of being a relic. I bandy words with my guildmates in the Moonglow Town Council, taking a mild passing interest in the affairs of guild management I long ago retired from. Anyone who knew GreyPawn the character would laugh at the concept of a retired Mayor keeping his words and advice unless called upon for them.
I’ll be here until they turn out the lights. I’ll probably be here until after that, too. The UO community holds too much sentimentality for me to ever leave it - I’ve given it too much and it has given too much to me. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been so heartened about the latest revelations coming from EA/Mythic.
Firstly, they’ve added a new Designer, Sakkarah. I knew her as a shrewd merchant on my home shard, and I patronized her venue frequently for plants. As a player, I always categorized her as one of those “bulk order book types”, the meticulous crafting kind that know the systems intricately. That they have made a person who knows Sosaria so intimately is magnificent, and a heaping wealth of grand new items and features has already been introduced with her signature.
If she can continue to burn the candle at both ends without jading or catching tunnel-visionitis as a whole host of UO designers who have walked before in her footsteps have, Ultima will reap tremendous benefits.
The second of the two miraculous points leading to a potential resurrection (or resurgence at least) of a vibrant community is the reinstitution of the Event Moderator program. I cannot overstate the massive importance of live events to the growth and sustainability of a virtual world. The Event Moderator program, if set up correctly and given appropriate lattitude, can breathe life into an otherwise stagnant game.
By careful and surgical application of unknown, random, invisible forces in a game world, the stasis of anticipated results on the part of the player is suspended. Immersion jumps up from the grave of the grind and thrives like a wild thing in the presence of the classically defined Interest.
By appointing Event Moderators, what the game is essentially doing is assigning the power of Storyteller, the TRUE and RIGHTFUL title of Gamemaster, as Lord of the Lore and possessor of the universal powers of creation, destruction and plotline, not simple customer service rep. Each EM begins to weave his own tales, thrust wholly onto players yearning for a break in the monotony.
I’m looking forward to what the near future has to bring for ol’ UO. Should be intriguing!
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
A Bittersweet Victory
Obama won by doing something so remarkable that we haven’t seen in American politics for many, many years. He transformed his campaign into a movement. In casting a vote for Obama, we cast a vote for the idea. In the same way that Raj Al’Ghul informed the fledgling Batman that you can fight a man, but not an idea - Obama embodied the idea of Hope and Change.
How could McCain have won out against the strength of such concepts?
Watching McCain’s concession speech was the sad frosting on an even sadder cake of a run for the presidency. Even at that late point, as we all looked on to see what backpedaling John would do, his crowd boo’ed not only his opponent but also him. I couldn’t help but feel both pity and embarassment as his own political operatives in the crowd tried that timeless technique of three-word chant to shut up the hecklers in his own faithful.
Then I remembered, this is a McCain/Palin rally. Why would the level of civil discourse be any different from their other rallies, concession notwithstanding. “Please believe me when I say that no association has ever meant more to me than that.” Right. “The failure is mine, not yours.” *Noo! Boo!* (Cue 3 word chant: John Mc-Cain, John Mc-Cain!). When he mentioned Sarah, you could hear half boos, half cheers, as though the crowd wasn’t sure where it should place blame.
I’m not going to go over why McCain lost. The reasons are too numerous to count, and surely include his “palling around with” the worst President our country has ever seen, an incendiary line of negative and tenuous “terrorist” links that bordered on the inciting lynchmob, and a complete ignoring of the destitution of the middle class. When at an Obama rally in a speech given by Barack, he mentioned John McCain and heard loud “Booo!”s, he said “Hey, now, we don’t need that. But on Tuesday, go out and vote.” That’s the difference.
It is a grand victory, a healing victory. All over the world the planet is celebrating the American election as a change in the way we’ve done business. Hope is contagious, and the global community has certainly breathed a sigh of relief that we aren’t going to have “FOUR MORE YEARS” of disastrous Bush/Cheney policies. Obama has won in a landslide, not only electorally, but taking the popular vote to boot. The Democrats have control of *both* House and Senate. Two out of three branches of the United States government are now under Democratic control, after 8 years of Republican monopoly.
Not all is cake and rainbows though.
Amendment 2 to the Florida State Constitution prohibits civil unions, domestic partnerships, and gay marriage three times over. And it has likely passed. Prop 8 in California which specifically removes the right of gays to marry has been approved.
It will take a little bit for those amendments and propositions to take effect, but on the whole it means that there is now only one state in the country where I can get married. It means that my health insurance benefits through my partner’s company may be revoked. It means a number of other “I’m straight and I take this for granted.” aspects of equality have been removed, to enumerate any further here would make me sick to my stomache.
So this is a bit of a bittersweet victory. But I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful that when California citizens realize they have voted to -remove- a right previously granted to them, the courts will intervene. I’m hoping that the President, or a brave member of Congress will propose overturning DOMA, the insideous “Defense of Marriage Act”. I’m hoping that the doctrine of Fair Faith & Credit that effects current marriage, currency, and everything else passed from one state to another becomes grounds for marriage equality at the Supreme Court.
Hope, after all, is what we got.