Lost in Webspace

Got Social Skills?

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:46:50 GMT

I had a shirt which I had needed to be taken in to be drycleaned. So, naturally, while doing my errands this morning, I stopped in at the local drycleaners.

Walking in, I saw, instead of the old Korean woman who is usually there, a young, college-age girl sitting behind the counter, doing something on a laptop. She wasn't beautiful, in the classic sense of the word, but she was definitely cute. She was a bit on the pale side, and she had glasses (and I don't care what anybody else says, glasses on a girl = HOT).

I gave her the shirt, and then she wrote me a ticket. She told me how much it would cost, and then I gave her a ten-dollar-bill, and finally she handed me my change. During the entire time, she never even looked up once. And why would she? To her, I was just another asshole customer, right? I got the feeling she was having a bad day. She clearly didn't want to be there.

And so, I was thinking to myself, "okay, asshole, say something. For the love of God, say something. Anything." But, for the life of me, I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound cheesy or creepy. "Hey, come around here often?" Groan. "I bet you see a lot of shirts." Please, just kill me now. "What are you doing on that laptop?" Uhhhh...what?

And so, like a total idiot, I mumbled something like "appreciate it" and turned around and left. She murmured something in response, but I don't remember what it was. She went back to her laptop, and I left, wishing that I had two brain cells in my skull to bump together.

The question, indeed.

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:53:28 GMT

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Hamlet, act III sc. 1

Still Alive

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:32:38 GMT

I like Obama. I really do. I didn't vote for him (I voted for McCain, probably the one Republican I would have voted for), but I'm glad Obama's President and am excited about what he represents.

The true test of his political longevity and gravitas, however, will be if he can turn his back on the far left fringe elements of his party and reach out to the conservatives, to Christians, to rural and middle America. So far, early signs seem promising.

From the Good News (if you're a cat person, anyway) file:

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:22:46 GMT

I'm far more of a dog person than a cat person, but this story might brighten the day of people like seraphbriar.

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:03:09 GMT

It has come to my attention recently that virtually everyone I know, including people five and six years my junior, make more money than I do. This has led to one of those "What-the-fuck" moments. I mean, it's not like I have an easy job. It's not like when I was driving for Pizza Hut and I could turn my brain off and go into autopilot. The customers who call in (and they do so endlessly) are calling because they have a problem. Something isn't working, and more times than not I'm the only one in the world that can help them solve it. Sometimes I have no idea what the fuck is going on, and that's when it's a scramble to pore through the often useless reference materials and cryptic databases for some sort of possible clue before the customer loses patience and yells at me. I deal with a lot of high tech stuff, man.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but the gist of it is that I believe one's salary should be commensurate with how stressful one's job is, and I have been stressed out quite a lot lately. Granted, I'm not in danger of risking actual physical harm (unless you count carpal tunnel), but, nevertheless, I have come to the conclusion that either I have the worst salary negotiation skills in the entire fucking world, or it's seriously time to re-evaluate my life. Seriously.

/angst

On a completely related note, I'm going to start a meme. What would you do if you didn't have to worry about money? Or, in other words, if you could retire tomorrow, what would you do with your life? Here's what I would do:

1. I would pay goodbyebartleby to draw a daily webcomic. Or I would pay her to draw Chibi Zombies as a manga, and then I would publish that sucker. I would insist on retaining creative input rights, though, because I'm no one's sugar daddy.

2. I would learn how to cook. SRSLY.

3. I would spend at least an hour a day doing some form of exercise.

4. I would join some sort of charity, like Habitat for Humanity or the Braille Institute. I would only work part-time, though, because I wouldn't want to turn it into a full-time job.

5. But mostly, I would play lots and lots of video games.

Top Ten Female Characters Known to Modern Geekdom

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:47:24 GMT

I'm not usually one to follow memes. In fact, in the small, backwoods West Virginia town where I grew up, I am known as totahatanka shanka, or "he who is not usually one to follow memes." Somewhere in Nigeria, there is a dictator with buckets and buckets of money, unable to spend any of it because I didn't give him access to an American savings account. In a Californian hospital, an eight-year-old girl named Brandy lies dying because I didn't bother to forward her email to everybody on my friends list. Because of me, personally, God has killed hundreds of puppies and kittens. Those brave few of you who actually read this drivel have no idea what my favorite music is, what my interests are, or what I secretly think about you, you tiresome fools.

Nevertheless, barhaven's meme of awesomely awesome female characters is a meme that I can actually get behind without having a small part of me die inside. So, without further ado, here it is--

#10. Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

She's just your typical, average, everyday high school student, who happens to have an unusual extracurricular activity. With equal aplomb, Buffy battles vampires and demons as well as she does loneliness, teen angst, and peer pressure. Saving the world several times before breakfast is just all in an average day's work for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Played on television by the talented actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy embodies the multi-faceted dynamic of modern feminis...okay, in all honesty? I just threw her in there to round out the list. Moving on.

#9. Jade (Beyond Good & Evil)

A severely underrated character in a severely underrated game, Jade (last name unknown) wields an unlikely weapon in her war against Evil Aliens bent on Enslaving All of Humanity: her camera. While this may not sound particularly likely to strike fear in the hearts of evil-doers, it's actually a unique and inspired mechanism of resistance in an environment where propaganda and media control are central themes. Aided by an eclectic group of allies (Animal Farm, anyone?) Jade eventually succeeds in rallying the people to overthrow a corrupt and jingoistic government which uses people's fears to coerce them into supporting a war they didn't want. It doesn't take a genius to see that the issues presented in this game are symbolic of current political events going on in a country we know only all too well. Canada, I'm looking at you!

#8. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)

This wouldn't be a top ten list of female characters in video games, books, television, or film without mentioning Lara Croft, the British Bombshell. From her humble beginnings in boobs boobs boobs BOOBS boobs, boobs boobs boobs boobs boobs. Boobs boobs boobs boobs boobs: boobs boobs boobs, boobs, and boobs. Boobs boobs boobs boobs Angelina Jolie boobs boobs boobs boobs. Boobs boobs boobs, boobs boobs boobs boobs boobs--boobs boobs boobs boobs boobs boobs. Boobs.

#7. Kai (Heavenly Sword)

Perhaps Kai doesn't deserve to be on this list as much as her older sister, Nariko. Strong, lethal, and unfaltering, Nariko is a flame-haired vixen who singlehandedly saves her entire clan from a murderous warlord by taking up the Heavenly Sword, an ancient and powerful relic which dooms whoever wields it. In addition with somehow managing to keep her impossibly long scarlet tresses silky and smooth in the heat of battle, Nariko defies traditional gender stereotypes. But screw her; you have to love a girl who prowls around barefoot and eats worms and snipes at enemies with a crossbow while hanging upside-down from trees. And that's why Kai is #7 instead of Nariko.

#6. Nanny Ogg (Terry Pratchett's Discworld series)

Perhaps Terry Pratchett was, as they say, pulling the raw prawn when he thought up Nanny Ogg. She's the fat old woman who comes to family get-togethers and drinks up all the whiskey and tells amazingly obscene jokes and never ever ever gets embarrassed about anything, ever. There's something you just have to love about Nanny Ogg, and perhaps it's the fact that when it comes to birth, death, and everything in between, she's been there, done that, and probably has a cheap souvenir. She's practically written the book on sex (The Joye of Snacks, pub. Ankh-Morpork Press) and one suspects that if you show her the Kama Sutra she'd dismiss it as being unimaginative. Oh, and she's also a witch, which brings us to our next entry:

#5. Granny Weatherwax (Terry Pratchett's Discworld series)

The diametric and polar opposite to Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax is as powerful a witch as you get in these parts. She's the Crone to Nanny's Mother (the position of Maiden is, you see, currently undergoing a brief period of transition) and although she mostly relies on a combination of superstition, natural lore, and Headology, she's as good as any you'd want to have on your side, because you couldn't possibly imagine her being on the other one. She's a good witch, because she's mortally afraid of what she'd become if she let herself be a bad witch. To quote Granny: "I cain't be havin' with this!"

#4. GlaDOS (Portal)

Okay, so GlaDOS isn't technically female. For that matter, she's not technically human. However, she's still awesome because Fuck You, that's why. She's a marvellously delightful artificial intelligence gone insane, and in the game, she alternately taunts, cajoles, pleads with, and threatens the player in the hellish test chambers of the Aperture Science laboratories. In a script that is eerily reminiscent of Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, GlaDOS exhibits an all-too-human propensity for sadism and cruelty. "The experiment is nearing its conclusion. The Enrichment Center is required to remind you that you will be baked, and then there will be cake."

#3. Max Guevera (Dark Angel)

It's been awhile since this series was on TV, but who knows? Maybe they're still playing it on the Sci Fi channel somewhere. Arguably Jessica Alba's breakout role, she played Max, a genetically-engineered super-soldier trying to fight for good in a post-holocaust America. That's right: I liked Jessica Alba before she was cool, bitches.

#2. Samus Aran (Metroid)

Some credit has to given where credit is due. Samus was one of the first (if not the first) female chief protagonist in a video game, if you don't count Ms. Pac Man. Ask any Gen-Xer, and they'll reminisce fondly, like John McCain talking about a Vietnam P.O.W. camp, about spending many many hours playing Metroid, going face to face with the hideous Mother Brain, getting to the ending screen, only to realize--holy fuck! It's a chick! Where is she from? What does she want? What is her favorite ice cream? Nobody knows, but that's because nobody has ever had the chance to ask her. Nobody has ever had the chance to ask her, because she's been way too busy kicking space pirate butt.

And the Number #1 awesomely awesome female character known to modern geekdom is....

#1. President Laura Roslin (Battlestar Galactica)

Laura Roslin is proof that a female character doesn't have to be a testosterone-injected, kickboxing-tomboy-in-your-face-million-dollar-baby-psycho-lesbian in order to be strong and capable. As the civilian leader of the fifty thousand or so left alive after the human race was very nearly wiped out by the Cylons, you might say that the President has got something of a big responsibility. And yet, she rises very aptly and gracefully to the task, providing hope and direction in a time of despair and chaos. But she's not all smiles and sunshine. She can be ruthless; she's not above tossing her enemies out of an airlock or attempting to rig an election. She's simultaneously strong and gentle, tough and diplomatic, unrelenting and human. She manages to fend off political rivals, murderous Cylons, and tricky philosophical condundrums--all while battling breast cancer. And that is why Laura Roslin is at the top of this list. As Apollo Adama said, when refusing to join a military coup against her: "What can I say? The lady's in charge."

On "Teeth": An Anti-Feminist Tirade

Thu, 15 May 2008 07:04:45 GMT

This past weekend, goodbyebartleby, my old nemesis--the Myrna Minkoff to my Ignatius J. Reilly--persuaded me to watch "Teeth", a film about a girl who... well, about a girl who possesses a...well, let's just call it an "unusual biological adaptation".

All right. This is a film about vagina dentata. Let your imagination go from there, and you've got a pretty good idea about what inevitably happens.

For those who lack the prerequisite imagination, or simply those who wish to revel in all of the gory detail, a brief synopsis is as follows:

Dawn, a high school virgin, begins the story admonishing young children about the perils of casual sex. Sex, she says, is a gift, to be given exclusively to the mother or father of your children. Of course, it turns out to be not quite as easy as all that, as Dawn finds herself awash in the attention of a handsome boy.

At first, Dawn resists the flirtations of her would-be paramour, but inevitably succumbs to his persistence, as well as to the urgings of her own hormones. Their relationship grows increasingly more physical, until, at the very cusp of sexual intimacy, she balks and tries to push him away. Unfortunately, her boyfriend isn't so easily dissuaded, and attempts what is pretty much tantamount to rape.

To his horror, he finds out the hard way that Dawn has evolved a natural defense mechanism. The experience is nearly as traumatic for Dawn as it is for her lover, who finds himself suddenly bereft of a particular part of his anatomy.

At first, Dawn is horrified and confused by what has happened. As she tries to come to grips with the answers, she is thrust into a series of encounters with increasingly creepier guys, all of whom attempt to victimize Dawn and instead find themselves the victims as they are maimed and disfigured by her voracious genitalia.

Eventually, Dawn comes to embrace her unique physiology. Her metamorphosis is complete; no longer the confused and frightened virgin, she uses her sexuality as a weapon in the most literal sense. She has become a female vigilante, a modern day Medea, punishing men for their sexual aggression.

Although the mysterious and monstrous genitalia is never shown, its effects are very graphically demonstrated. Several times during the film a severed bloody penis is featured quite visibly, lying on the ground; one dismembered phallus is promptly devoured by a dog, in a scene that is as comical as it is horrific.

"Teeth" never even attempts to be subtle; every symbolic mechanism--from the ominous twin smokestacks of the nuclear power plant in the opening shot, to Dawn's mother's tragic illness, to her step-brother's ferocious Rottweiler--is blatant and clichéd. The plot is so predictable you can see it coming over the distant horizon.

And that, perhaps, is the film's only saving grace. It never attempts to deceive or trick the audience. You know pretty much what to expect from the title sequence, which features a series of single-celled organisms attacked and destroyed by suspiciously cigar-shaped parasites, until the last surviving cell turns the tables and devours the parasites instead.

Yes, my friends, that's as profound as "Teeth" gets. In the end, I really had no one to blame but myself, because I knew exactly what I was going to get going in.

Nevertheless, I still found myself with an uneasy, uncomfortable feeling as the credits rolled. Was it just empathy with the film's victims? Was it simply a matter of castration anxiety?

It took me awhile to realize that, in fact, I was actually offended on some level. I found the movie to be aesthetically offensive. Of course, it didn't really help things much to hear goodbyebartleby recount the events with something like manic glee.

Don't get me wrong. I know that the film is, by definition, Art; and Art is supposed to be provocative. After all, any strong opinion on anything is bound to offend someone, somewhere--that doesn't mean that it should be censored. Censorship is a slippery slope, and if you limit one individual's means of expression, you must do so for everybody, including yourself.

But my enjoyment of the movie was tempered by the plain and simple fact that I found something about it objectionable. I couldn't share in goodbyebartleby's praise of the film; in fact, I couldn't even discuss the subject without becoming emotionally subjective.

Why? I wondered. What did I find so distasteful? Obviously, the violence and gore I witnessed were artificial, manufactured; indeed, the credits even guarantee that "no men were harmed in the making of this film." The characters were imaginary; the situations absurd.

Thematically, it is easy to assume that I simply objected to the extreme violence, especially since it was all inflicted upon men. Let's be honest: "Teeth" is, essentially, feminist revenge fantasy. It doesn't matter that it was both written and directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, a man. The concept of Vagina Dentata is not a new one. Even though its original conception was anything but feminist, in modern times it is used as a feminist ideal. If a woman possesses the ability to mutilate her sexual aggressor, then she is no longer the victim of sexual abuse. She is now in control; she has all the power over sex, and over her partner.

By itself, the concept sounds innocuous enough--or, at least, I would argue so. Historically, the balance of power in the battle of the sexes has been heavily tilted in favour of the man. We are physically stronger, more intimidating; it is much more difficult for a woman to rape a man against his will than it is for a man to rape a woman against hers.

But the film doesn't just stop there; it goes on to suggest that all men are creeps, rapists, and perverts. Every male character that Dawn comes into contact with inevitably tries to rape or molest her, with the sole exception of her step-father. Her boyfriend, who could represent every straight male teenager in America (if not the world), attempts to take advantage of her. Her gynocologist, who should be a trustworthy authority figure, turns out to be a sleezebag. Her best male friend seems, at first, to be supportive and compassionate; but alas, it turns out that he only ever thought of her as just a notch in his belt. Her step-brother, a monumental greaseball of epic proportions, has fantasized about fucking her since he was eight years old.

Taken as a statistical sample, the film seems to paint a very disturbing portrait of maledom in general. The only sympathetic male figure is Dawn's stepfather, who is--let's face it--an effeminate, emasculated character. He can't control his own son, and in fact is at the latter's mercy when he attempts to punish him for his bad behaviour.

"Hang on a second!" you might be thinking. "You're reading way too much into it! It's just a silly movie!"

That may very well be true, but even so, when taken in conjunction with the narrative style, "Teeth" tosses a cheap shot at the male identity. Billed by IMDB as "Comedy-slash-Horror" (more comedy, I suspect, than horror to those of you in the female audience), the film's sight gags are the horror movie equivalent of a man getting hit in the crotch by a football. An example of this is a scene where one of Dawn's victims is shown on the operating table, as the surgeons sew his penis back on. "It doesn't seem hardly worth it, does it?" glibly asks one of the doctors.

Once again, I may be reading into it too deeply, but it sure seems like a snarky shot at male sexuality. That is Everyman on the table, his very masculinity rendered moot.

Let's face it. It's an unavoidable truth that to insult a man's penis is to insult the man. This is due to both biological imperative and cultural conditioning. In Roman times, a common way to insult an enemy was to call into question his ability to produce offspring. If a man couldn't father children, he was an evolutionary dead end; he was worthless.

These days, since the advent of birth control, this has transmogrified into a man's ability to sexually satisfy a woman. Why is so much emphasis placed on penis size? Why do Cialis and Viagra sell so well? No man wants to be thought of as being undersized in the penis department. It has to do with our egos, with our pride. It may not be very enlightened, but it's just the way it is.

Ladies, if, at this point, you're still insisting that it is absurd to be offended by a work of fiction, then consider this:

The Hills Have Eyes is a movie about a tribe of mutants, genetically deformed by nuclear radation, who terrorize a family on vacation in the New Mexico desert. The mutants thrive on cruelty and sadism. In one scene, two of the mutants enter the recreational vehicle, where the family's youngest daughter has been left alone. The mutants then proceed to brutalize and rape her. At first, she attempts to fight them off, but one of them hits her in the face, rendering her stunned and helpless as he removes her pants and proceeds to penetrate her. She is shown, screaming and crying, her hands clawing desperately at the RV window--all to no avail. As her attacker reaches orgasm, he throws back his head and whoops in triumph, in what one can only assume is a tasteless attempt to provoke a cheap laugh.

If you can tell me that you honestly weren't offended by that, even a little bit, well, then, I salute you.

Maybe I'm just thin-skinned to this sort of thing. Perhaps I wouldn't take offense to "Teeth" if I were more secure in my sexual identity (and I'll leave that to you to interpret, although I'll freely admit that I'm relatively sexually inexperienced).

I think, though, that ultimately, the reason why I was offended was not so much the theme of violence against men, or the lack of sympathetic male characters; but that the concept of vagina dentata possesses profound and complex potential, and it was a shame to see it reduced to slapstick horror.

(Want to see what all the fuss is about? You can view it here, while it lasts.)

Barack Obama and race relations

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:02:13 GMT

I consider myself a conservative, and I have liked McCain since 2000, when he ran against Bush in the primaries, but Barack Obama is very, very hard to dislike. His speech today--in response to revelations of controversial statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his "spiritual advisor"--was, I thought, exactly what it should be.

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Ahem.

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:04:05 GMT

Inspired by barhaven.

Brain-eating amoebas? Yikes!

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:12:12 GMT

A killer amoeba, living in a lake, encounters a young boy who's just going swimming with his family. It enters his nostrils, latches on to his olfactory nerve, and from there attacks his brain tissue. It literally eats away at his brain cells until he dies.

Sounds like a horror movie, doesn't it?
But it's absolutely true.

Freedom! Sweet merciful freedom!

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 04:03:04 GMT

First day of voluntary unemployment. Item number one on the docket: organize porn collection.

Hey, it's important to have priorities.

Aside: Deadbeat roommate still jobless, still stiffing me on the rent. Must. Restrain. Urge. To Kill. In addition, he has taken up smoking again, even though said activity has caused him previous lung-related ailments and he does not currently have medical insurance. Well, I ain't covering for his stupid ass when he has to go to the hospital because his lungs start swelling up again.

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:13:42 GMT

jdevil_76, if you're still interested in looking over my resume, can you shoot me a quick email to remiel@adelphia.net? I'm not sure if I have your email address.

That goes for anybody who is willing to do me a favor by glancing over my resume and offering suggestions and advice. I figure if I get enough suggestions, I can fuse them all together, kind of like Captain Planet, transforming my mild-mannered resume into some sort of Super Resume.

Oh, and seraphbriar, I miss you too. =) Hope you're doing well.

For jdevil_76...

Wed, 02 May 2007 22:43:59 GMT

jdevil_76, what do you think about this?

This is why I don't listen to NPR...

Wed, 02 May 2007 22:32:25 GMT

So on the way home from work yesterday, I decided to tune in to NPR and see what they were saying about the May Day protest march. (For those of you who don't know, I'm referring to the pro-immigration protests that occured yesterday in several cities around the country.)

Being NPR, I fully expected them to be pro-immigrant, since that is typically a liberal or leftist position. What was surprising, however, was exactly how extreme their positions were.

The illegal immigrants were represented as oppressed and brutalized victims of a ruthless American economy which created the conditions of poverty which made them want to illegally immigrate to America in the first place. Several times they were referred to as "modern-day slaves." America was labelled as an imperialistic, colonialist monster that "raped" the economies of smaller third-world nations. At other times, they called the US "the land of broken promises."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I would expect this tripe from something like Air America, but NPR? I had only listened for about five minutes before I started thinking to myself, countdown to comparison to Hitler or Nazis in 3...2...1...

And sure enough, just like I expected, the word "fascist" was rolled out to refer to the current administration.

Unable to stomach the garbage I was hearing any longer, I switched back to the Larry Elder show.

Let's hear it for web-based timekillers!

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 23:09:52 GMT

So I have a couple of online addictions. The first is kdice, a multiplayer Risk-type game. It can be maddeningly frustrating sometimes when your luck turns sour, but it's still fun overall.

The second is iSketch, basically Pictionary, but online. It's online Pictionary! It's pretty fun. If anyone ever wants to play and I'm online, shoot me an IM. My IM name is WalterCupcake (don't ask).

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 19:27:26 GMT

Happy birthday, seraphbriar!!!

Interview with an Umpire

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 23:09:24 GMT

I usually despise memes. Despise them! But the opportunity to be interviewed by goodbyebartleby was too good to pass up; and now I must play by the rules, lest the mindless gods of LiveJournal smite me.

01. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."

02. I respond by asking you five questions of a very intimate and creepily personal nature. Or not so creepy/personal. If I don't know you they'll probably be generic.

03. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions.

04. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.

05. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

-----

Questions from goodbyebartleby:

1. If you could have sex with anyone on the planet, consequence-free, whom would you bang?

Wow.

Rather than say something that's only going to get my horny ass in trouble, let me just take a page from Trent Reznor's book and say EVERYONE in the FUCKING WORLD.

Except for kids, though, because that's just wrong. And everyone over 50, because ewww.

2. Same question as above, but now you must choose an RP character, yours or someone else's. Male or female. Human or inhuman!

Hrm, I have to pick just one? There are a number of characters I could put on that list, but I would have to say that dubious honor goes to Midnight Sakkran. The woman is a sex machine!

3. If you inherited two million dollars and, as whatshisname was giving it to you aliens landed on the planet and announced they would be blowing it up in two days' time, what would you do?

I would give it away. As cheesy as it sounds, that's really what I would do. I think I would try to gather up as many poor people as I could and serve them all a really good meal before aliens blew up the earth. I would try to reunite fathers with sons, mothers with daughters, wives with husbands, etc. And I would pay for one extremely obese girl to have liposuction surgery, so she would get the chance to feel good about herself just one time before she died.

4. What is the single greatest song you've ever heard?

That's a tough one to answer, because I don't really have a favorite. And, if I do, chances are it wasn't the same song I would have chosen five years ago, and it most likely wouldn't be the same song I'd choose five years from now.

My favorite song all through college was Alphaville's "Forever Young". Does that count?

5. Do you believe in an afterlife?

As much as I'd like to, no, I don't. I'm not sure what happens to us when we die, but I'm fairly positive that all the major religions have got it wrong. Maybe our spirit energy goes back to the Lifespring, or whatever. Maybe we get recycled as another life form. Maybe we just cease to exist altogether. Of one thing I am certain, and it's that life is all about shit happening, and happening for no fucking reason. If there is any sort of divine plan, it's beyond all humanly comprehension.

Because if something should happen to me...

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:34:50 GMT

...I don't want my last LJ entry to be about WoW, dammit.

Lessons learned for 2007:

Never take for granted the people who love you, even if that love is not of a form that you might perhaps wish for.

You don't know what you have until it's gone.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 18:42:26 GMT

Final Fantasy XXII--I am getting really, really sick of this game. All you pretty much do is grind. Grind, grind, grind. They should have called it Final Fantasy: Grinding.

To get anywhere from Point A to Point B in this game, you have to fight your way through about a million critters. Something appears, you fight it, you incur some damage, have someone set up to heal you automatically. Rinse, lather, repeat about a million times. Sure, there are deviations on this formula--the hunts, for example--that provide an actual challenge; but basically the process is the same every time: 1. Make sure your party members are buffed with Bubble, Protect, Shell, Bravery, Haste, etc. 2. Have two guys hack away at the thing while the third heals like a motherfucker. 3. When all else fails, use a Quickening.

This should be fun, but somehow, it isn't. Maybe it's because, with gambits, you can make it so that the game doesn't need you at all. Your job is to run around, find something to fight, and then let the AI take over.

I wish I could say that the game's story makes up for the repetition and dullness of gameplay, but I can't, because there is no fucking story. Seriously. The main character's motivation seems to be that he just doesn't have anything better to do at the moment. And while a rigidly linear plot is nothing new to the FF series, in this one the objectives are nebulous at best and completely fucking stupid at worst. Hey! I know! Let's waltz right in through the front door of the enemy's main HQ so we can destroy their super magic-bomb with a sword we found! It's not like it'll be guarded or anything! Oops, Dr. Cid got away, time to chase him back across the entire continent!

But I guess the thing that torques me off the most about FF12 are how rare the item drops are. I'm not even talking about the drops from monsters; I'm talking about the urns and chests and things. When you've slogged through six levels of an underground dungeon and slain a succession of giant dragons in order to claim the treasure chest they've been guarding, you want that treasure chest to contain a suit of badass armor. What you DON'T want is for that chest to contain a suit of badass armor maybe 2% of the time, and a fucking Potion the other 98% of the time. Not cool guys, not cool.

Guild Wars--Since I had a Best Buy gift card lying around, and I've been desperately trying to look for an alternative MMO to World of Warcraft, I decided to check out Guild Wars. So I bought it, took it home, installed it, tried to register an account--oops! my account key is already in use. I contact PlayNC's Account Support, scan my receipt, the account key, I include a screenshot of my account key being denied. They tell me that, surprise surprise, that account key is already registered to an email address I've never heard of. I tell them I have never heard of that email domain and that the key must have been cracked.

They tell me to go back to Best Buy to try to exchange the key for another one. I go back to Best Buy with receipt in hand. Best Buy tells me no, they'll be happy to swap out the discs, but they cannot give me another account key. So basically I'm stuck with fifty dollars' worth of software that is completely useless.

So now I have to mail my receipt and the account key to PlayNC's corporate HQ, so they can "verify" my claim. For some reason, I have a funny feeling that they're going to be lost in the mail. Good times.

World of Warcraft--My roommate is pure evil. Since my trial account ran out, he went out and BOUGHT me an actual copy of WoW, as well as copies for our other two friends who were trying it out. Now they're all playing it.

How the hell am I supposed to say no to that?

So he buys the game for $19.99, and I register for six months at $12.99 a month, which comes out to about $85. He pays $20, gets me hooked, and I pay $85. Evil.

Anyway, so it looks like I have been dragged back into WoW. I'll be on Windrunner, because that's what my level 16 mage is on, unless someone gives me a really good reason to roll a new character on their server. So give me your best, most convincing reasons why I should start over on your server, and you'll have the exquisite pleasure of my company.

And God knows that's a hot ticket.

We must save the World! ...of Warcraft

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 20:44:52 GMT

It finally happened.

You have to understand that, after dabbling in Everquest a few years ago, I swore to myself that I would never, ever let myself get drawn into another MMO again. My EQ experience can only be described as equal parts addiction and frustration: rather like heroin, but without all the fun hallucinations. Therefore I remained on the sidelines while the WoW phenomenon completely passed me by, while nearly everyone I knew, one by one, fell prey to the game's nefarious grasp. Not me, I swore. I would stay pure and chaste; I would dine on the lesser fare of single-player games.

Enter my roommate, Albert, a WoW veteran of several years, who recently picked up the game again after a hiatus. As with all MMOs, the quality of the experience is directly proportional to the people that you play with, and he wanted to drag myself, as well as our friends Nick and John, into the game with him. It was a hard sell, but Blizzard's insidious ploy of offering a free, week-long trial, without any sort of necessary commitments whatsoever, helped sucker us in.

So it was with some trepidation that I signed up, an arduous process that took three or four hours to install the game and download all the various patches.

After another few hours of trying to decide what race and class I wanted to play, including three or four false starts, I eventually settled on a human mage. Her name would be Gothiqua (Gothika was already taken), and she would be Emo Sorceress Supreme. Sporting dyed black hair, multiple piercings, and teenage angst, I sent Gothiqua forth into the world of Azeroth.

Now, a week and 16 levels later, I look back at my experience, feeling like I've just taken the first step on a long, wonderful journey. Now, granted, compared to the level 60 l33t I'm still something of a n00b, but I think I can safely say that World of Warcraft is a fun little game. As I've said to Albert on multiple occasions, it's like Blizzard took all the good bits of EverQuest and improved on it, and left out all the bad parts.

Part of it stems from the fact that there's always something to do. Most of your time in WoW will be spent on completing quests, which are ubiquitous throughout the world. Most of the quests, at least to begin with, are simple to achieve, and reward you upon completion with a nice experience boost, a handy item, and a feeling of satisfaction. There wasn't any of the aimless wandering of EQ, where I killed things just to kill them and collect ph4t l00t. There's that in WoW, of course, but the beauty lies in the fact you can do so many things at once. While attacking bandits for a quest assigned by a Goldshire guard, you can pillage and loot their stuff, selling the spoils for handy gold; while also simultaneously working on your skinning and cooking skills from the local beasts. There's always something to upgrade, improve, or practice on; the game never gets boring.

The learning curve is quite gentle, at least to begin with. Every class can solo until about level 10 or so. After that, the differences between the classes start to become readily apparent. One thing that was pleasantly unexpected was the discovery that the mage could actually solo, more or less. As long as I had mana left, I could usually handle critters of higher levels, and even groups of two or three, by myself. After EQ, where my wizard was dead meat unless I happened to convince a "tank" to help me out, this was definitely a nice surprise.

Sure, some of the other players were idiots and yahoos, but I've accepted this as an inevitable fact of any online multi-player game. The nifty thing about WoW is that, unless you're playing on a PvP server, PvP combat is entirely optional--you don't have to worry about being slain by a PKing asshole unless you like that sort of thing.

My only real complaint was everything--the characters, the creatures, and the world--seemed sort of cartoonish; it was like they took Warcraft 3 and made it an MMO, which I guess was what Blizzard was going for. I wish that the various races could look a little bit more realistic, a little...sexier. Is that so wrong?

So now I have to make the decision whether to actually cough up money for WoW or not. While I did definitely enjoy my WoW experience, I'm not sure if I'm ready to make that commitment just yet. It wasn't as addictive as I was afraid of; maybe that's just me getting older. I'm definitely more of a casual gamer than a hardcore one, willing to devote no more than maybe one or two hours a night. I've been hearing a lot of things about Guild Wars, mostly good, and I think that maybe I'll check that out before deciding to stay with WoW.

Holy Playstation, Batman!

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:31:31 GMT

At the latest report, eBay bids on Sony Playstation 3's have gone up to 3000 dollars.

My question: who the fuck would pay 3000 dollars for a PS3? Can't you wait TWO OR THREE FUCKING MONTHS?

I've never understood that, and perhaps that explains why I'm a societal reject. I simply don't understand this consumer culture. I don't understand why we have to have the latest and greatest electronic thing NOW, why we have to see a movie on opening day, why we have to get a 2007-model car, etc. Is it really that important to be the first kid on your block to have a insert-name-of-tech-gadget-here? Does it really inflate our sense of self-worth that much?

UPDATE!

If you don't have 3000 bucks to blow on a PS3, rob someone at gunpoint and take theirs!

So true...

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 07:09:31 GMT

I don't care which side of the political aisle you're on. This is funny.

Throbblefoot Aquarium (Perry Bible Fellowship)

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:54:24 GMT

I wish, I wish, I wish I could draw like this.

In other words, the Victorian, all pencil, creepy "Crumbly Kids" style. Color? Who needs color?

This isn't Perry Bible Fellowship's usual style, by the way. Check it out, if you haven't already.

Yikes.

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 00:09:37 GMT

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/28/school.shooting/index.html

Wow. Picture this: you're a sixteen-year-old girl, going to high school and just trying to live your life. Then, one day, some psychopath comes into your school, takes you hostage, and kills you.

Sometimes my own problems seem rather insignificant by comparison.

Weird...

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:55:50 GMT

So last Friday, I was online, minding my usual online business, when completely out of the blue, I get an IM from--of all people--Happyelf, aka Abel.

(For those who don't know, from about 2000 to 2005, I used to spend a lot of my online time at Shards, an rp site. Shards was responsible for much laughter, many tears, and many an hour both good and bad. And happyelf was pretty much my archenemy there for awhile. We're talking pretty close to a blood feud.)

We talked about Something Awful, about games, about Grant City, Command and Conquer: Generals, and even briefly about politics. He was still radically left-wing, of course, but he was pretty civil, even friendly. It was pretty surreal, like I'd slipped through a dimensional tear and fell into Bizarro World.

Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that because it was the weirdest thing to happen to me last week. I guess it just goes to show that people do change with time, and we all grow up eventually.

On a completely unrelated note, I need more LJ icons. Preferably something clever and sarcastic. Anyone feel up to the task? I'm looking at you, _boneflower_. Or possibly you, goodbyebartleby.