Archive for the 'Life' Category

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The Good Doctor

Friday, February 20th, 2009


Hunter S. Thompson
 
Never turn your back on fear.
It should always be in front of you,
like a thing that might have to be killed.
 
Hunter Stockton Thompson
7/18/37 – 2/20/05



Posted in Life, Politics | 1 Comment »

I’m Sick

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

I’m sick of being told that America is an inert nation – a desperate scrabble-clawed lunge, the clouding breath of men who realize that the trouncing they took two weeks ago makes naked the lie that we are a nation unwilling to progress. I’m sick of hearing that a President who wins the American people by nine million votes must be cautious, but a President who wins by three million – after losing by a handful – has a mandate. I’m sick of these feckless, shallow men in empty grey suits manifesting on my television to tell me how bloody relevant their perpetually wrong opinions are. I’m sick of being told that America is a nation of limitations. Of small-mindedness. Of petty, knuckle wringing, back stabbing never-ran leaders living in infinite disconnect with the people they have promised to serve.

I’m sick of being ashamed of the things that my country does in the equatorial shadows of jingoism and false bravado. Of a government that should not, will not, and does not. Of empty smiles and tremendous egos asking me to tighten my belt because the yowling maw of imperious corruption knows no abatement. I’m sick of the very suggestion that the wholesale pillaging of my generation’s future is in our own best interest. Of the terms of our indenturement being draped in the flag of patriotism. Of being told that the bootprint on the back of my neck is some violet badge of courage.

I’m sick of the status quo being a benchmark instead of the minimum. Of the shrill chorus of hollow voices that have told us about all the things America cannot do out of one side of their mouths while attacking my love of my country out of the other. Of the audacity to mourn the passing of our darkest hours. Of the scalpel-mouthed minority staking out a surreal survival on the ragged edges of self delusion that tells me my America isn’t possible because theirs has failed them. Because theirs has failed us all.

I’m sick of being told that America cannot come together. That we are divided, sequestered by our beliefs. That the trivialities that separate us are insurmountable by the dreams that unite us. That fear of the “other” is a family value. That some damn fool ideological jigsaw puzzle version of our country, sliced along artificial borders, carved by ancient rivers, and sundered by the non-corporeal unreality of an electoral college makes us foreign to our brothers and sisters. That America must always be viewed as a Jackson Pollock in reds and blues. That I didn’t watch Americans – not liberals or conservatives, but Americans – carry their shared sorrow in buckets and their unbreakable resolve in their souls under the ghastly plumes of a mutual heartbreak.

I’m sick of being told that we cannot.

Yes we can.

Posted in Life, Politics | 9 Comments »

Child’s Play Oh Eight

Friday, November 7th, 2008

Although my posting this is kind of like the echo of an echo of an echo, I figured I’d let everyone know that Penny Arcade has officially launched Child’s Play for this year. I figure since the non-gamer contingent of my readership is likely much larger than it used to be, I’d give everyone a heads up. And rather than some mishmashed explanation of what Child’s Play is, I’ll just give you the blurb right from their website.

Since 2003, over 100,000 gamers worldwide have banded together through Child’s Play, a community based charity grown and nurtured from the game culture and industry. Over two million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception.

This year, we have continued expanding across the country and the globe. With over 45 partner hospitals and more arriving every month, you can be sure to find one from the map above that needs your help! You can choose to purchase requested items from their online retailer wish lists, or make a cash donation that helps out Child’s Play hospitals everywhere. Any items purchased through Amazon will be shipped directly to your hospital of choice, so please be sure to select their shipping address rather than your own.

When gamers give back, it makes a difference!

This charity event has always hit home for me because, when I was in Kindergarten, I was one of those kids. Now, I was incredibly lucky that my stay was brief, I made a complete recovery, and I had two amazing parents who were there for me as often as I could want. Not every kid is that lucky. And even with those advantages, I remember what it was like sitting in that bloody hospital bed day after day. So Child’s Play is important to me.

To that end, I’m asking everyone who reads and enjoys my site to consider giving something to the charity. It doesn’t have to be an expensive purchase, and if you have a personal preference against video games, there are plenty of other toys, movies and incidentals to choose from – I usually go in for at least one set of Leggos in addition to whatever games I buy. Or you can make a straight donation. What’s great about Child’s Play is that Gabe and Tycho don’t have any sort of real overhead. Anything you donate will go right to the kids – about the closest thing they have do to overhead is paying to ship the donations to the various hospitals.

Last year they shattered the $1 million mark, which is pretty exciting on its own. I know everyone’s budget is a bit smaller this year, so we’re not all going to be ponying up for 360 Elites. But please consider giving something. And for all of you political wonks and malcontents out there, if this Presidential election has taught us anything, it’s that the small contributions of a large number of people can make all the difference in the world. Though really, if you have a heart at all, these letters should more or less put you on notice.

Posted in Games, Life, Politics | No Comments »

George Carlin

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

George Carlin – Comedian. Rebel. Hero.

May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008

Posted in Life | 2 Comments »

Child’s Play

Friday, December 14th, 2007

So, I’ve had the Child’s Play banner up on the site pretty much from when Penny Arcade started up the project again this year, and I just thought I’d drop a little line about it here. As a gamer, I feel like it’s my duty to take part in Child’s Play. But it’s a duty I am both proud and happy to perform. I usually take part in a few different toy drives anyway around this time of year. But there is none I am so pleased to contribute to as Child’s Play.

It’s Gabe and Tycho’s creation, but it belongs to all of us. It is unique in that it is a charity drive supported almost entirely by the gaming community. And on some level, yes, it is our statement that despite being scapegoats for every whackjob that brings a gun to church or a bomb to school, that stereotype neither represents nor defines us. But it’s so much more than that. It’s a triumph of generosity and spontaneity and the incredible good that can be done when so many individuals rise to the occasion.

But more than any of that, it’s about the kids. Now, if you read my site, you know that I discredit just about anyone that uses “Think of the children!” as an excuse for their own personal motivations. But that’s because so many people hide so much false charity and concern behind that empty slogan. What’s great about Child’s Play is that they have almost no overhead. The toys and the money (which then gets translated into more toys) all wind up in the hands of kids who got dealt a lousy hand. The Child’s Play website has an entire page full of letters and testimonials they have received – and if you haven’t donated yet, a few of those letters will definitely put you over the edge.

Plus, you know, there’s the fact that Child’s Play has a very legitimate shot at breaking $1 million in donations this year. The mind reels. The heart swells. And the mouse clicks.

Posted in Games, Life | No Comments »

Why The Dollar Sucks

Wednesday, October 24th, 2007

Okay, so I’m going to talk about economics here a tiny bit. Please don’t run away screaming yet. I had the same reaction to this crap in college, so I promise not to make this painful. But I’m writing it because it’s the easiest way I’ve come up with to answer a few very related questions that people keep asking me about oil prices and wages and exchange rates and all that other kind of prickly economic brain soup. So I’m going to start with a very simple analogy that everyone reading this post can understand – and probably has some personal experience with. It’s not a perfect analogy, and some of the gritty details are different, but in laymans’ terms, it works.

Odds are, either you or someone you know has debt. Maybe it’s on a credit card, maybe it’s a student loan, maybe it’s an underpaid mortgage. But you probably have at least one friend or relative that’s in debt, if you are not in debt yourself. And being in debt sucks, for more than just the obvious reasons.

Sure, it means you are bleeding money. But it also affects your credit. If you have too much debt, you know that any time you want credit, it’s going to be at an exorbinent rate. Forget buying a home, you probably can’t even finance a car if you’re carrying a sizable chunk of debt. And if you do manage to get a loan or a credit card, you’re looking at interest rates that are just absurd (a friend of mine was lucky – lucky – to get 18.7%). Basically, the lesson is that when you owe money, your credit is no good.

Well here comes the logic. Because money is really just credit. I know we don’t think about it that way, but then again, we all trade in dollars in America. Inside of one’s own country, we don’t think of our currency as credit checked against the nation that prints the money. It’s just, you know, money. But what is that money worth? A long time ago, it was worth a certain weight in gold. But it hasn’t been that way for a very long time now, and we couldn’t go back to the gold standard if we wanted to. No, an American Dollar is worth a tiny little sliver of the American economy itself. That is where its value comes from. It is essentially global credit.

And if you understand that dollars are credit, then you should also understand that when America racks up a metric fuckton of debt (up to $9 trillion from $4.5 trillion in six short years), our credit goes to hell. So countries that use other currencies are looking at our dollar and saying, “Geez, that’s just not worth what it used to be worth.” And that messes up our exchange rate. The British pound and the Euro are now worth much more than a dollar. The Canadian dollar is now exactly even with the American dollar, while it used to be worth far less. And the truth is that it still is worth the same amount, roughly, compared to other currencies. We’re just in the tank.

Since all oil in the world is traded in American dollars, this is also part of the reason that the price of oil per barrel is going so high (there are other reasons, make no mistake, but this is one of them). As dollars become worth less, it takes more of them to buy the same amount of stuff. And that goes for other goods as well. Every time America borrows against its credit, the dollars in your wallet become worth ever so slightly less. 100 bucks is 100 bucks no matter what the value of the dollar is, but how much stuff you can buy with 100 bucks changes based on our imaginary global credit rating.

The other problem is that, since foreign currencies are worth more compared to the dollar than they used to be, it makes it easier for foreign entities to buy us out, lock stock and barrel. I don’t want to go off on some xenophobic Main Street USA jingogasmic rant, but at the same time I’m not so keen on America becoming a financial subsidiary of China or Saudi Arabia – or any other country for that matter. The dollar sucks because we devalued it. Because we keep on borrowing and borrowing against our own credit. And if we don’t get that back under control before the American dollar stops being the defacto currency for trading barrels of oil, our economy will never recover.

What I’m saying is that reducing the national debt is a matter of national security. I know there are no tanks and bombs and scary old dudes with beards living in caves. And I know national security is way more fun when the key player is Jack Bauer than when it’s Alan Greenspan. But we still have to deal with this shit, because whether it’s boring or not, it’s taking more money out of your paycheck than the IRS ever could. And it’s bad news for America.

Posted in Life, Politics | 4 Comments »

Musically Challenged

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

So, let’s pretend that you’re an executive in an industry that, despite making hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, isn’t making quite as many hundreds of millions as you used to be. And let’s also pretend for a moment than 95% of your product is crap straight from an infected mule’s ass. And you’re pissed, see, because it turns out that some people have been wandering over to the mule with their own buckets. So in order to convince your customers to buy from you and not tap the mule directly, your brilliant new idea is to charge more money for the same amount of crap. Yeah, so. . . honestly, I forget where this metaphor was going, but the music industry is still run by idiots.

Because coming soon from Universal Music is the USB Single. You see, it’s like a conventional CD Single (which is already too expensive, because all you get is one good song and two shite songs, neither of which you want), except it’s going to be on a tiny little USB thumbdrive. And, if I know the industry, it will be loaded with enough Digital Rights Management as to make the fucking song unplayable. But the real kicker is that this little USB Single is going to cost almost twice as much as a CD Single. So you’re paying double the overcharge for one song, because it happens to come on a small plastic stick instead of a flat plastic disc.

Are you with me so far? Universal thinks this will be a big hit because, um, of the internets? And, you know, like, the web or something. You see, because people are pirating music not because it’s crap, or because it’s overpriced, but because of, uh, computers? So if they overcharge people for crap music, but do it on a little plastic thing that plugs into a computer it suddenly becomes cool again. Supposedly, the little USB sticks will come with movie files or pictures – nothing you couldn’t just include on a CD of course – and cost more because of it. The reality is that they cost more because USB sticks cost more than blank fucking CDs, and this is a dogshit stupid idea. But if there’s one thing the music industry knows, it’s dogshit stupid.

And this is exactly why public opinion is so squarely turned against them. It’s why, yes, people pirate music, and no, no one feels even remotely bad about it. Because the industry response to “You sell donkey crap and it costs too much money!” is “How much more would you pay for that donkey crap if it came in a small silver box?”

And while I am on the subject of public loathing for the music industry, I’d just like to take a moment to shoot to hell the notion that was recently offered by an RIAA lawyer that when you purchase a song, what you are actually buying is a license to listen to that song. And that if you want multiple copies of that song (for your car, your mp3 player, your home stereo, your computer and so on), you really ought to buy multiple copies of it. What they are talking about here is licensing. And I know licensing.

The model they are using is the software industry, where what you are buying isn’t the physical CD with the software on it, but they serial number and the license key (essentially “permission” to run the software). If you’ve ever had to enter in a serial number or product code after buying software (this is especially common with online games), you have purchased a product license. If you work in an office, all of your office software has a license associated with it. So you could own five hundred copies of the CD, but if you only own one license, you only legally can have the software installed and working on one machine. Hell, very often you can download the software and not own a physical copy at all. Valve distributes virtually all of their games this way via Steam. And every one of those games is associated with your account, which purchases the right to install and run those games.

Which is fine. But there’s a funny thing about all of that software. It’s mine. And I can prove it’s mine, because I have a fucking license for it. If my computer gets wiped out, and I want to re-install Half-Life 2, I can just hop online and re-acquire it. If I want to install Sam & Max on a dozen computers I can, provided I only play one at a time. And if I lose my copy of Windows XP, but I have my serial number, Microsoft will send me a new fucking copy of the CD in the mail. You try calling up a music label and request a new batch of CDs that you legally own the license to. Let me know how that turns out for you.

The music industry never sold their product as a licensed commodity, and still doesn’t until this day. They want all of the protections and extortions of licensed software without providing any of the advantages or support that comes with it. And without actually, you know, handing out license keys so that there is a concept of ownership outside of the physical copy of the CD. The music industry does not sell licenses. They sell products. Physical, material products. If they want to shift over to selling permission to experience content, that’s fine. I’d actually welcome that. But it’s going to require more than shady lawyering on their end to make that happen.

There’s a truism in virtually any market that if you have to tell people why they need a product after you show it to them, your product is a dud. A product can do one of two things. It can address a pre-existing need that the consumer is already aware of. Food, for example. You don’t need to tell people why they need food in your advertisement you just need to tell them what kind of food you are selling. Or, a product can manufacture a need and then try to fill it on the spot. Restless leg syndrome is a good example of this, because up until that commercial came out, that condition was called “being a jittery bitch”. Hallitocis (a ten dollar word for bad breath) is actually a classic example of creating a need while advertising the product to fill it. Dandruff is a milder version of this scenario – more than twice as many people use a dandruff shampoo as actually have dandruff.

But USB Singles? No one has a need for that. It reeks of the hopefully already failed Ringle – a recent proposal where a consumer would purchase a music single along with the crappy, low-fidelity ringtone version for (here it comes again) twice as much money. Do you see a pattern forming here? Specifically, one where the industry keeps trying to sell its consumers products it doesn’t want at a higher price? Yes? Congratulations. That’s what separates you from a Universal Music executive.

Posted in Games, Life | No Comments »

Verizon Wireless Users Beware

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

If you have a Verizon Wireless account, and you do not want a metric fuckton of advertisements and marketing being directed at your person, you have less than thirty days to read the fine, fine print on the last packet of worthless paper they sent you, track down the toll free number to call, and opt out of the Customer Proprietary Network Information program. Or you can just call it from here, as the total call takes less than a minute.

1-800-333-9956

Basically, Verizon wants to sell your call information. Who you call, who calls you, how long you talk, and at what times – just for starters – to anyone with an expense account and too much free time. However, they’ve decided to label this selling of your personal information as a feature, as though they were giving away free call waiting, and hide that new feature in the fine print of the latest revision of customer service agreements that you never read because they are generally six thick pages of incomprehensible garbage and poorly thought out marketing.

The trick is, you’re already enrolled! And unless you take yourself out of the program soon, you’ll remain enrolled indefinitely. I’m really getting that creeping, Arthur Dent feeling here that satire has become some sort of psychotic sanitized performance art, a macabre dance of marketing and information overload intentionally designed to lull consumers completely to sleep so that we won’t have to undergo the unpleasant sensation of being knocked out cold before we get fucked in the ass.

And after you’re all done telling Verizon Wireless that being overcharged to send text messages every month is not an implicit agreement that you want your personal information being doled to every douchebag on the planet that knows how to set up a cold call center, you might just want to swing by their website and tell them exactly how you feel about the CPNI program. I’m going to try to get a direct number to call up and bitch at as soon as I can.

Posted in Life, Politics | 3 Comments »

Army of Dude

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

If you’re reading my blog, and you haven’t read Army of Dude from end to end, then you quite simply fail at life. I highly suggest navigating back to 2006 and reading it in chronological order, as it’s a pretty amazing, insightful, and rather touching read.

Posted in Life, Politics | 4 Comments »

The Day That The Music Stopped

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

The Day That The Music Stopped

I remember it like it was yesterday. I think I always will. It was my last year of college, and I was dividing my time, rather unevenly, between living at home and stamping around up in the woods of Annandale. It was a Tuesday – I don’t know why I so clearly remember that fact, but it’s always one of the first pure facts that comes to mind. I actually slept through the collisions. The first thing I remember is my mother’s voice. “Aden, you have to wake up. Wake up. Something is happening. Someone is flying airplanes into the World Trade Center.”

And that was how the collective worst day of our lives started. For me at least. It seemed impossible, and for about the first ten minutes or so I was sure it was. I was positive that I was about to wake up, my eyelids snapping open in sickly repulsion from what absolutely had to be a nightmare and nothing more. That sort of thing doesn’t happen – except when it does. It wasn’t until the first tower caved in on itself that I realized the whole thing had gone so far that we could never come back from it. And as the second tower fell, burying steel and concrete, victims and heroes, I looked over the gaping edge of my life and understood that America was suddenly a very different country.

I’ve shown the graphic for today to a number of friends, and most of them wondered aloud if the symbolism wasn’t backwards. Many authors, pundits and journalists have described my generation as living in the shadow of September 11th. Usually, they are not actually from my generation, so I can understand why they get it wrong. The generation growing up now, the ones that were in grade school or even high school – they are growing up in the shadow of 9-11. They live in a world that is so infinitely different from the one that we lived in just a few years ago. But they are at that crucial age of learning what the world is and how it works, and the lessons they take away from that experience will be forever darkened by what that world has become.

I made the graphic look the way it looks because it is my generation, the twenty-somethings and early thirty-somethings, that carry that day with them. We cast the horrid shadow of that day in every light and feel it creeping beneath our feet at every step. Because we learned about the world when it was sane, and just about when it was our turn to inherit it, that world was shocked into insanity. Even the craziest amongst us were unprepared. We carry with us the memories of the lives we’d hoped to lead and never quite will. We are the ghost of what America might have been. We are so much shattered potential.

I don’t live very far from New York City – so close in fact that we never actually call it that here. Sometimes “New York” and sometimes simply “the city” as if to imply that when you live in close proximity to such an amazingly urban place, it really is the only thing you can think of as a city. It was utter panic and unmitigated terror getting in and out of the city for a while. People whispered in conspiratorial dread about bridge bombings, tunnel cave ins, power plant explosions – small scale armageddon carried out by the thousands.

I’ll never forget the first time I got back into the city. It was shortly after they’d started running buses through the Lincoln Tunnel. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, the approach ramp to the Lincoln Tunnel runs right along the water front, near Hoboken and Weehawken. The whole way down that ramp, you can see the entire skyline of New York City from Harlem to the Statue of Liberty. The Twin Towers had always stood out from that skyline, two great pillars of glass and steel reaching upwards, making even the other skyscrapers further north look like runts of the litter.

You didn’t see simply the absence of the towers. That would have been erie enough. What you saw was a giant column of smoke, hanging in the air in a way that was utterly unnatural. It was as though the most malignant storm cloud you’ve ever seen had been captured, funneled, and grated across the open sky of New York. It was days from when the towers came down and there was still this impossible twisting scar of smoke and dust and ash trailing southward for miles. Literally too thick to see through, like a wound bleeding into nothing. Granted, the media showed that stretch of debris and ash often over and over. But what most people didn’t see was that it hung there for days like a bitter pain that simply would not relent.

The media also showed you little camps set up around ground zero, walls lined with posters and fliers of missing loved ones. But what they could not communicate was the scope or the scale of it all. A city block in New York is a very different thing than in most other places. And in a place where you can get trodden into the concrete for not moving your ass across the sidewalk fast enough, there was this radial zone of utter discordance. Everything and everyone stopped. You reached out and helped a stranger not because it was the right thing to do but because it was the only thing you could even think of doing. You did it because you so desperately needed to put something right in the mayhem. You did it to drown out the shock. Because you knew at any moment, you might be the next person falling down.

I carry that day with me. I always will. It lives below my skin, ingrained in those parts of my body that never get recycled. It grows older and burrows deeper with each passing year. I stood right on the wild, bright edge and watched the world I was expecting, the world I was ready for and the world I’d grown into an adult understanding of, vanish. Like a cheap conjurer’s trick, as if to imply that it had never been there in the first place. No flourish, no buffer, just a sudden flash and then the realization that on September 10th, I’d had no idea what the world even was. I walk out of place and out of time, like a refugee from my own future. And while rolling years and heavy footfalls push me further from the day that the music stopped, I can always feel it stretching out to meet me. Passing with me. Anchored to that point when the world split open, and madness walked the streets of New York City.

Posted in Life | 1 Comment »

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