Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Nighttime with OZ

I watched a man get his dick bitten off, got lectured on the fall of the Aztec empire, and felt sorry for a nazi shitbag. It's funny how that works out.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

s/he

Five four three two one...

Okay so there...wow it is really hot in books a million tonight, or I am running a fever I have no idea what exactly is happening to me right now. I also don't care. Not true but I like to put on a brave face. I would like to point out that my insomnia has gotten much worse recently. I went to bed at 4 wired as fuck, and who knows when I actually fell asleep. Yeah I may or maynot have a topic for tonight but damnit it is writting time and that is going to happen no matter what. It will be bad poetry time in a bit grunt.

I'm not sure how that is going to work out, but even a wrong step is better than a step not taken...and other things that make me sound like a dad. Not my dad mind you but a dad, that prototypical sitcom dad that we all have in our heads when we think of dad. Or something.

Part of me wants to write about racism. Another part of me wants to write about the acdemics treatment of the lower class and the connection between the two. Part of me wants to write about the danger of acedmics when they release an idea that wasn't quite revised yet. Another part of me wants to discuss stuff about gaming...gaming. Gaming, obviously more important than racism.

No seroiusly what the hell is there to say about racism that hasn't been already said? Well a lot actually because most people spend more time deciding on politically correct rhetoric rather than actually talking about the problem.

Oh fuck it I am going to write about the most recent thing to annoy me. S/he. That symbol has never failed to piss me off and one day recently I was just sitting there thinking of things and that came up, and man what an annoying concept. People should be ashamed.

So yeah the astute observers, which I assume is all of you, have noticed that I have been calling it a symbol rather than a word. This is because I believe that in order for something to be a word it needs a few requisit items, such as a definition and a phonetic component. / has no phonetic component because it is not a letter. Strawman arguments are styleish and easy to write!

They suck though so let us move on. Lets say that you as my loyal ready have just suddenly seen the light and decided to abolish the s/he symbol in favor for the also gender nuetral word Mikerocks. Very wise of you. However, it is still wrong.

Since this is not a blog an not an acedmic paper I am going to present my evidence up front in a disorganized blob.

Doubleplus good
El muchacha
Feminism


Right. So frightening view into my thought process no? Well it only gets worse from here on in.

Doubleplus good. 1984 is a book about control. Lots of control everyone, everywhere was controlled underneath the all seeing eye of big brother. Good stuff. As you may have guessed from the reffrence we are going to be looking at the phonetic controlls imposed on the peoples. I forget the language used in 1984, but there is a point in the novel where they make a big deal about how they are actually working to shrink the language if there are no words to express negative thoughts then there can be no negative thoughts. This is a rather childish view on the importance of language but what the hell, Orwell isn't a linguist and the book is mostly allegorical anyway.

The thing is though is that the thoughts didn't stop. Placing linguistic control on ones through process is not a fix. It is a lot like placing duct tape over a leaky faucet and declaring the job compleate. Part of what makes our form of comunication so unique is the ability to take new concreate & abstract thoughts and codify them. Abolishing gendered pronouns such as he she in to unfunctional symbols won't work. It won't eleminate the visual diffrence, nor will it deal with the precieved diffrences between the multisexes (male, female, trans, androgine, et cetera) based on personal experiences. S/he may make a statement regarding how we structure our language but it is functionally inadiquet to brining about social change. Even if it was would you want to?

Perosnally I am a fan of more words not less. The idea of breaking two fundamental building blocks of our language into one functionaless symbol seems nebulouse at best. The english language's ability to come up with and absorbe new words is increadble. Look I just did it earlyer, multisexes. There is the singular multisex. It is easy, fun, and it doesn't tread on the toes of negative icky ideas in favor of our bright shiney new ones.

Yeah this is where I am going to come off as a little bit hysterical. It can't be helped. However, I am firmly against the idea of concept assasination. Okay yeah I agree the he/she dichotimy has done just a little bit more harm than good, you don't need to tell me twice I am with you on that. However, I think it is an idea to be kept and treasured, not just thrown out because it is "doublepluseungood" no it needs to be remebered.

Instead of harping on this point for the next thousand years i think it is easyer to pose a question. Which is better. To eliminate the male/female dictomy by removing the basic distinction between them such as the signifiers he/she. Or would it be better to keep using he and she, with full knowlage of what the words mean, the connotations behind them, the history of them, and thier inherent inadiquecies. Instead of just covering up by using one friendlyer word.

SWhew. This subject is actually a little bit trickeyer than I thought it would be. Mostble because of the way I set it up.

Lets take the feminism example. Okay that piece of evidence is going to be larger than the word feminism. Specifically it is that archtypical quote, "It is tempting to use a word less loaded than feminsim to protray the feminist moviement..."

Which goes back to the point i just made. Using feminsit rhetoric against itself is one of my great pleasures in life. The idea of using a word less muddied than feminsim is one that makes sense on the surface but there is the idea of the history behind feminsim. It is important to make all of that work for you rather than against you. After all we are all part of the same movement.

El muchacha. I've read a lot of colonialist theory in my day. I plan on reading more because I find it interesting, but just a tad bit uncomplicated. I have never seen a momement quite so dedicated to the idea of, "IGNORE THEM" as coloniaism. I fear that it might be getting eaten by crappy theory put out by sub standard acedmics. Still I digress. Say what you will about post colonialsit theory there are still some pretty basic concepts that we can all agree on. Pointing to man other cultures on the face of the planet and say, "No you are talking all wrong" is a bit of a fuck ass thing to do. It is really easy for us to adopt the s/he thing or the mikerocks word if you like talking and shit. However, there is a certain point where we are going to bump into the el/la languages and then what are you going to do? You are asking them to make a dramatic fundamental shift to the entire structure of thier language, instead of you know using thier language to increase the complexities inherent within the whole gender dynamic. I mean there is no reason why people from france or spain can't have thorughly nuacned views of gender because they gender every noun in thier language.

It is silly.

Now for thous of you who know me super well you have an idea of my still forming pragmatic mindset. Specifically the idea that if a word or idea is not doing anything then to throw it out.

The thing is though is that the words he and she are doing something. They are the first steps in distinguishing gender. Set up the polar opposites, then learn about everything in the middle. That's where all the neat things happen.

Okay. Well l am done for now. Excting stuff all in all.

The thing that sucks is that there are some compelling arguments for the s/he thing. It also looks neat, and it harkens to Trin's I/i thing which is really fucking cool and one of my favorite pieces of theory. But that is all it is a thoery, bit I am all about the practice, that is the point of theory after all. ANd I think the whole s/he thing just doen't work.

KAY! DONE!

I'll do gaming stuff next time.

rpg companinies are stupid

Animal Crackers in my soup!

Gaming. Writting about gaming is neat because only one person has really done it before and he's gone now so I can take over. YAY.

Where to start. Actually I don't think I'll do theory at the moment I want to take a moment to diverge.

See there is something that mystifies me about roleplaying, minature wargaming and all the other stuff. It is the fact that companies are so fucking bad at excisting.. Seriously, I don't understand how these people manage to stay in buisness with the sort of slipshod terrble buissness practices that I've seen. Okay the embazzlement thing that happened to Pallidum sucks but these things do indeed happen. I am reffering more to Games Workshop not allowing online purchases of any of their products through any store other than thier own, or how TSR used to relentlessly hunt down fan made webpages and threaten them with leagal action, or just releasing products that are just poorly edited.

Even most professionally produced games still feel and look like most grass roots produced games and there is no real break between the two. Notatble exceptions being Games Workshop for minatures and Wizards of the Coast for roleplaying. Even still between these two companies nothing massive oppertunities are being missed and that just fucking confuses me.

Right now we live in a world that has never been more receptive to table top roleplaying ever.

The Harry Potter series, the lord of the rings movies, Twilight, Buffy, oh and the multi million wow players. At the moment fantasy and vampire novels are mainstream. The world is primed and ready, roleplaying topics are ever present in the media, and best of all the middleschool demographic is right in the middle of it all, which when most roleplayers really get thier start.

So what are the roleplaying companies doing? Nothing out of the ordinary. Seriously though, you take a rules light game system that doesn't scare everyone off, pack the book with source material, background, maps where applicable, and two custom made adventures, and we are off to the races! Buy some ad space in the twilight magazine and pull a gun on Barns and Nobles so that your books are on the shelf and you just fucking printed money. Not only that but you can continue to print money in the form of premade game sessions for people who are to busy to properly prepare (just about everyone). The boat has been missed on most of these properties but still the mainstream is primed and ready this could be so easy and yet...yet no one has taken advantage of it.

It may see wierd that I am calling out for the corporate bastardization of my own hobby but this is definatly one of those ends justifies the means moments. Roleplaying doesn't have to be the crazy geek hobby played only by the wierd kids who don't shower. Now is the time where that steriotype can be really broken. I'm not saying that by listening to me rpgs will be catapulted into the main stream don't be stupid. But, as of current, most people are brought into the hobby though word of mouth. One person will get a book because they were interested, they will teach other people and that's h0ow it goes. By having a massive player influx brought on my easy to read/understand rules as part of a swank starter kit we could really drive up the number of roleplayers.

Hell just WOW alone should be utilized into bringing people in. WOW is perfect because most wow players have a basic sense of party dynamics along with squad based tactics. They make excelent roleplayers once they learn the rules. Garrrrgh.

I don't understand. There is a WOW rpg, a Buffy Rpg, a LoTR rpg & minature wargame and yet literally NO effort on the patrt of any of the companies has been made to bring in more casual fans of the seires. In addition there is no Harry Potter or Twilight rpgs when there bloody well should be.

Harry Potter especially, holy fuck that is the most perfect rpg setting fucking ever! And it targeted the perfect age group. I don't get how these companies can fail so mightly at this.

Oh well. People are dumb and I got to go to the bathroom so I might as well wrap it up here. Peace.


MANY DAYS LATTER

Upon further reflection I think part of the fear when acting on pop culture explosions is the idea that the product will fail. A good solid rpg product will last a developer forever. Shadowrun is coming up on 25 years, AD&D is coming up on oh god I don't even know how old it is, and warhammer has also been around forever. Games Workshop was honestly mistified when the buzz around the LOTR game died along with the buzz around the movies. The point I was trying to make, and may of failed is that they can use these products to reel them into the main rpg staple lines. The buzz won't last forever, but really? What is the diffrence between Twilight and Vampire the Masqurade? Fan people don't answer that.

Mighty Misc Rambling Awesomegood time

Throwing egg at the wall. It occurs to me that the last time I've seriously written fiction it didn't go as well as I would have liked. It also occures to me that I actually used to be good. The probelem is multitudiouse. Still I am going to make headway. It is the new project.

So I've found the place to write, Books of Million of all places, yeah I know! I used to not be able to say this place's name without sneering in contempt, but then I realize something, everyone sneers this places name in contempt so it has just the right mix of populated with anti socicial miscriants, and quiet. Unlike Barns and & Noble which is where I will go if I feel like meeting new people.

Biggest hurdle overcome, in fact I am sitting in my new home right now, and I am trying to decide on a place where I will be sitting from now on. That's not interesting to anyone else but me. Choosing where to sit is important to me.

Step two is a little bit harder. I got this style more or less down, the happy go lucky exposistion and I can pretty much talk about anything like this from role playing games to complex literary theory like this. Of course I've been writting like this for awhile now. One thing I need to work on is cutting down on explanation of certain things. Part of the problem with myspace is that I became consiose of my audience. Hence the move, now I have gone back to throughly screaming into the void.

I want to get going again with Fiction. The writters block I am currently experienceing is of no consiquence, right now I have certain concerns over matters of style. So once again the great haiku matchine will be booted up again. Haikus! People get all bent out of shape by Haikus and I've never really understood why. Then I thought about it for half an hour and figgured it out. Its the 5 7 5 syallble structure, gets to people. Of course when you are writting in Chinese you can say a fuck of a lot more in 5 syallbles than you can in english. Multi language phonetic concens aside my issue is one of sentence sturcture. ANd nothing causes you to vary a sentence structure than ramming things into 7 syablles. Woo.

SO there is a start but now we need to move fowards, and that means out and out poetry. I can feel sasha grinding her teeth in rage at this thought. To boil down her prefered form of expression into a linguistic tool to aid me in my preferred form of expression seems profane. Even sans sasha the idea of using poetry as a doorway to writting worthwhile prose seems so delightlfully backwards and preverse that I will engage in it forthright. I figgured between the Haikus and poetry the actual prose will show up when it is ready. I'll start with little snippets of things, which remindes me I need to make some writting playlists. Me and the minibar is going to have to be on it. I also think I am going to end up stirring up the black sick that acculatges at the bottom of my soul where the black bugs live growing fat off of my fear and insecurities. So I'll need a can of hairspray a butane lighter and a new pair of steel toed boots, oh and some rotten meat but I can get that from work. I used to believe the black bugs were real, and I think they will become a predominate image throughout my writtings.

I think most of my past attempts at poetry have failed because, quite simply I couldn't do it. Being ostracized wasn't what I was afraid of, I mean it already happened. No there was the very real fear of being drugged into an oblivion at the hands of some head peeper. That was a real concern of mine. However, I am the only voice left, the last one standing. There is nothing but soot, ashes, bugs, and me. Still alive and strolling through the wasteland where not even the dead want to hang onto life. It will be like an adventure only there will be nothing but fear, pitty and pain for rewards. YAY.

I do the ultra dark thing when I write it is going to happen. The trick is to make it so that I am not grimdark gothy goth. The line between Maldoror and Gainman (minus all the parts of him that suck). What I need to be is the diffrence between The Comedian and Wolverine. Both the perfect warriors but one doesn't suck. Its like licking the bellys of maggots, and finnally not wretching for the first time. That's the sort of thing I need to do. But in order to do it I am going to need to scrape off the rust (sorry salad fingers) and oil the matchinery.

That's what poetry will let me do. Who knows maybe once I start I'll never look back which would be sad because it would negate the need for this contraption that i am using to write this right now. I like this pocket pc it is far more portable than a laptop, and it doesn't make my lap hot.

Note to self download "King of Pain"

I don't think that is the actual name of the song but it will get me to where I am going.

You know for the life of me I don't know why I dropped the erotica project. I think I'll pick that back up. I also want to get going on the friday the 13th thing. It will be a hoot, some of those movies I actually enjoy, namely 6 & 7. The main problem I have is that it fits the source material to well. It is such an obviouse match that it won't ever go anywhere. Hell even the series most conveluted moments work perfectly.

Take the end of 4, leading into 5, and capping out at 6. The end of 4 the little smart kid disguises himself as the childhood Jason in order to confuse Jason allowing for his bigger sister, and ultimatly the little boy to defeat jason once and for all.

This drives the little boy insane, during 5 we see him as a much older boy in an institution trying to cope with some bad shit. Then some asshole dresses up as Jason and goes on a killing spree.

In 6 the same kid acidently raises Jason from the dead (yeah talk about luck) and the whole thing starts all over again until old hocky face goes back to the bottom of the lake.

Now according to violence and the sacred this all makes sense. See literature is filled with subsitutions in order to trick a maruding force. Jason and the Argonauts hid within the belly wool of the sheep in order to escape the cyclopse. The Cyclopse, recently blinded at this point, would run his hands over the backs of the sheep to make sure no one was sneaking out, yeah so the cyclopse isn't to bright but Jason is a retard so they work well together.
We also have the biblical example of Isaac Jacob and Esau. Esau is the favored son of Issac and Issac wants Eboy to give him his final blessing. Issac's mother Rebecca overhears the request and helps Jacob to trick Isaac, first by prapring the meat Isaac requets then by covering Jacob's arms with the skin of a Kid (baby goat asshole) so that when Issac feels Jacob's arms he will be hairy like Esau.

In both cases the animals serve as sacrificial subjects to allow for the machinations of the men involved.

Back what happens at the end of 4. The little kid who I am arbitrarrly nameing Jimmy Teeth, turns Jason into the sacrificial subject. Buh? See in the other examples men disguied themselves either as animals or using animals. Animals are a prototypical subject of sacrifice in ancient culturues I know these things I am a beetle and beetles are good scholars.

In the 4th Friday the 13th Jimmy Teeth disguises himself as the thing causing the violence. This is not an exceptable sacrificial subject. To give you an idea this would be like Mr. Argonaut (look his name is Jason too so to save confustion we will be calling him Mr. Argonaut) disguising himself as a cyclopse to escape, or like Jacob disguising himself as Issac.

What happens, within the symbolic function that sacrifice represents is that Jimmy Teeth becomes the sacrifical subject to defeat an avatr of reveng (jason) however in so doing he himself becomes sacrificed (his insanity). However since this is not an acceptable sacrificial subject he assumes the identity of the avatar of revenge (end of the 5th movie where he has a mask and knife) and so in the 6th movie he has to face down Jason once again. Jason, during the 6th movie, becomes fixated of Jimmy Teeth and will only halt his murderouse rampage once Jimmy teeth makes himself apparent.

There is also a part in the Voilence and the Sacred where he talks about how when there is no sovign subject to help releive chisises caused by violence rectifying the spiral caused by revenge violence is a long and belabored process.

So yeah two pooints in one fell swoop, come on this shit is to easy for me. SO I might abandon this project or reduce its scope so that I only talk about movies 4-6. The point I would be making in 7-10 would be nothing more than location, space, psychic powers, are all incapalbe of stopping the destructive force of regenge and I would be hammering home the point of how just because the object of rage isn't present doesn't mean there won't be voilence.

The first three movies would be roughly the same thing. SO it is reall; the middle where things get most complicated, it is also where the franchise hits its stride most throughly. So the extra space would be just spinning wheels really. I could do that, but I am better than that. SO Ha!

However, out of this little escapade comes another thought. See religion is effectivly dead as a source of moral guidence for our society as a whole. Okay dead is to strong of a word but they wouldn't be so panicy regarding abortion and stuff. Lets face it lots of people say they are christians but the number of people who actually attend church on a reguar basis is much less. Then out of those church goers that actuall christians are fewer still. So...yeah. Where do we get our moral makeup from? In theory our parents, however I got most of my moral makeup from everyone around me and then thinking about the things I saw and felt so I am not so sure how this is going to work.

ESSENTIALLY. In ancient cultures there was no system of justice, which meant that revenge violence could be extrodinarly damaging. As a result there were extream amounts of prevension in place, ie sacrifice. Our culture is the inverse. We have a sovign subject (courts) who mediate revenge violence so the focus on prevension isn't as nessiary. However, it still excists, and the Friday the 13th series is part of that prevension, along with the remains of reliogion, and whatever else forces morality down our throats.

Whew. So I might want to do a little thing on that because it is neat. It also fits in with comic books. Specifically ghost rider who is a specific sprit of vengence...as a super hero. Sovign subject activate! I wish there were more trades of the good Dan Ketch years, cause Jonny Blaze can make for some rough reading occationally. Still I got some Garth Ennish and Jason Arron books to fall back on, so I'll see what I can rustle up.

Okay well that's enough of this for a little bit.

Friday, March 13, 2009

No I'm Not Dead

Heya, nope not dead. No one is that lucky. I have however, have been having the worst time trying to find the time to write. I haven't been sleeping well recently, and it just got worse since daylight savings time so I've been really tired a lot lately. I've also been strangely busy with lots of other stuff like getting things moved around my house, painting warhammer minatures and other things. The being really tired recently thing though, that's killing me. UGH!

I actually have things to write about too like:

My DS as a multimedia entertainment device and how it fucking rocks my world

The problem of using the word s/he along with arguments of how it really isn't a word at all

Kingdom of loathing stuff

My excitment over running shadowrun for real and being able to take 4th edition out for a spin

The diffrences between shadowrun and exalted and how D&D bridges the gap between the two

oh and evan is running 4th edition and I wish him luck, he asked about rule books and stuff and I gave him some advice, he didn't ask for more so I assume he is okay. Even still I kinda just want to spout GM advice because it is fun

and some other stuff.

I also want to start writting fiction again because I miss doing it, and I should because it is stupid not to. I was going to go tonight but I can't even think straight at the moment so...I'm not going to. I'm going to play metal slug.