Some things have happened and I've decided to weigh in, partly because I have the time and mostly because I want to. Also because it is fun and I want to wind up before I start my real purpose for being here. Okay so off we go.
Chick Fil-A. You know it has gotten to this point and I still haven't seen the original thing that has pissed everyone off. I know it is out there and I am sure I can google it right now and I'd get all the information I want but whatever. Ultimately it isn't important. Thanks to people not caring it doesn't really matter what you said anymore but what everyone thinks you said. That's its own thing but don't worry philspohers assure us that Post Modernism is full of crap and everything is fine *giggle*.
So it happened. Lets address that first. The head of Chick Fil-A managed to piss of the gay community and people who support it. The whole thing is massivly embarrassing and more than a little shameful but whatever. As most of the people say who have no stake in the matter, "Whatever they are entitled to their opinions". Okay lets stop right there and have a conversation about opinions. Yes everyone is entitled to their own opinions. I am having one right now. I am also a rabid first amendment supporter so it isn't like I am against him saying.it. Go forth and speak your mind. However, just because you express your opinions doesn't mean there shouldn't be consiquences. Consiquences are one of those things that matter. Without consiquences we all become those people who comment on youtube videos. We become people who can say anything and we don't need to weigh our words or temper our thoughts. It allows us to be shameful. I fully endorse his right to express his opinion but I also fully endorse the responce that the company has been getting. I'd join the boycott but I don't eat fast food so it isn't like me not spending my money extra hard is going to make a difference. I am glad the Jim Henson company dinged them upside the head though. That made me feel good and I'd buy the muppet movie in support but I don't think that's how that works.
I'd like to take this time to remind people that it is easy to forget how much this shit hurts when you aren't the one being descriminated against. If you happen to be lucky enough to be straight then it doesn't really affect you. No one is telling you that you are sub human, a genetic abnormality, that you deserve to die, and that you aren't allowed to marry. It is sad and it is hurtful and it is important to stand up to people who say hurtful things and remind them that it is not very nice. I am not saying there should be leagal repocussions or that we should make a law against not being nice, but loosing a toy line and a good old fasioned internet smack down is enough.
In fact this is one of the few things that has gone right recently and in a lot of ways this situation is cause to celebrate. The ceo said something crappy, people stood up, stuff happened, words have been said, repocussions have been dished out, and this far no one has been sued or physically hurt. This is the way it is supposed to work and that is something we shouldn't overlook either. It is nice in a way.
Lets move on to Aurora. Guns don't kill people but they help, I think we should only ban costumes if they are shitty, your face. If Chick Fil-A , seriously the dash button is in a really inconvenient place on the keyboard so they will NEVER be mentioned again, Aurora is everything going wrong. Our responce to the Aurora shootings is wrong on a basic fundamental level that makes me wanna curl up with a book and ignore the world. I am going to do this a little quick because the subject depresses me.
1) This event shows that we have learned absolutely nothing from Columbine, or any other mass shooting. We are still the same sad scared little people we were at that point. We ban random things, say stupid things, over react then under react and now Michael Moore has vanished into obscurity so we aren't going to get a neat documentary on it.
2) Ban banning? Here is my thing on the gun banning, would it help? How many tons of cocain are smuggled into our country every year? You think guns can't be smuggled in as well. While you are contimplaing that remember that the rise of organized crime in our nations really started with prohibition. Giving criminals more avenues to make money by committing crimes seems like a bad idea. It will also mean that when someone wants a gun they will be able to get them. Continuing on there were several spree killings awhile back in china where people would run into daycare centers with a knife.
2a) A question. Why should the guns matter? If I were to give everyone in America a gun tomarrow it shouldn't affect our murder/violent crime rate. It hsould be a non issue. We shouldn't want to kill each other. I am going to say something next and I EXTRA don't mean it in a christian sense of the word. However, the problem with the way we treat our fellow man is a spiritual one. Banning guns isn't even the problem. The problem is why do we shoot at each other more than other people. Why do we hurt each other more than other people. Why do we have more serial killers and spree killings. WHy do we have so much mental illness. Answer these questions and maybe just maybe the guns won't matter.
However, that won't happen while we subsitute our opinions for clever pictures on the internet and engage in empty rhetorical slogans so we get the world we deserve.
NOW POLITICS
Romney went to London and totally fucked it all up. It is sad. Romney has accused Obama of being a bumbling feckless leader, and he pissed off a country by being a bumbling ineffective clod. Ultimatly this won't matter in the poles because most Romney supporters have their heads up their asses and don't understand how government works. Here is the thing though, While a presidential's power is massivly stymied within the bounds of our nation a president's power to deal with the rest of the world is NOT. While a president can set domestic policy they really need the congress and senate to help make the laws and find the money. How we deal with the rest of the world is a presidential thing. Not only did he bungle london but his advisers bungled london as well and this is increadibly bad. Right now he just looks like an idiot but what's going to happen when it matters? Is he going to be able to deal properly with China so something bad doesn't happen, how is he going to handle Iran? If he wins this election he is going to be saddled with Afganistan and is her going to be able to deal with the complex cultual differences they they present when he can't even handle London? Now that's a thing. Okay doing other things now.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
And Now The Swan Song
Long ago I realized that I hate titling things so I just made them make as little sense as possible and called it good. Hello again and I am back for MOAR! I am starting to come to the conclusion that excercing would be a good like choice to make but I hate running. I just don't like it. I never have and I never will. I remember at the height of our DDR playing at one point a friend of mine and I wondered if we were in shape. We almost were! We were some badass sprinters and we had quite a bit of endurance so it is possible it just needs to become a thing I do. I'll figgur it out somehow. Maybe bike riding or something like that I dunno. I loved riding my bike as a kid.
Lets talk about something else. I am not sure what though I just know I am in the mood to write. Oh pop politics! That is what I wanted to talk about because this is a brilliant little topic. I came up with the idea late one night after anime club when we were talking about stuff in the parking lot. I forget how it came up but a friend of mine suddenly asked "did the post office ever start making money". This is a person who is someone who follows the tech news not the political side show abombination thing. Yet it is something he knew just enough about to think it is a problem and to wonder if it has ever been resolved. There are lots of things like this, the debt ceiling, the health care bill, and whatever else the GOP feels like making noise about.
The insidious thing about these pop political topics is that is they work on two levels. One is that there is something fundamentally wrong with our country and two is that nothing ever gets done. Lets go back to the post office point because it has some fertile territory. Now there is some interesting topics that we can debate about. Other countries have privatized their postal services to great effect and we already have Fedex and UPS in place. It is possible for our post office to make a profit and having some discussion of maybe condensing down the number of offices we have or better yet modernizing them so we need less post offices in the future. Something like that. There are lots of level headed and interesting ways this conversation can go and it is something I've had the pleasure of talking about a couple of times.
The way the debate was framed was one congressman held up a chart and asked people, "When was the last time you've been in a McDonalds? When was the last time you've been in a post office? Then he pointed at the chart comparing the number of McDonalds vs PostOffices in the US as if this is a compelling argument. I don't have the numbers and I am not getting them for you but there are MANY more post offices in the US than there are McDonalds. This was the intelectual high point of the televised debate on the topic. This was the best they could do. This was what they considered good arguement. Some asshole compared a place where you can get good fries and shitty food to a place that processes and distributes the mail with such speed and effecency that you can mail things across the country and have it get there in the same week. Your right the two are absolutely equivalent and we are all stupid for not seeing that earlier. You guys can't imagine the unbridled fury I have towards that arugment and everyone fucking went along with it like comparing apples to oranges was the thing to do. Okay enough about our failures to hold an intelectual debate, in fact I need a clean break from this paragraph.
The main point is that the post office can make money. It is possible. There is a million complex reasons why it isn't. However, all of these reasons are linked to the fact that the post office has congress as a middle mananger. The post master general can't make many changes without congressional approval and we all know how well that goes. I realize I am saying this without substantiating it and I am sorry but it is lunch time and I am running low on time. Google it and trust me you will find what I am talking about it isn't hard.
So the GOP makes massive hay out of an issue that is congress's fault as a whole and yet the squarely place the blame back on the post offiice. In this patiular case they didn't do very much to make Obama look bad directly but here is the thing you don't have to. They turned the post office into a big deal. They turned it into a massive side show and the facts were grotesquely miss represented. What is the big deal about the post office? Well it is loosing money and we should have a talk about it. That is pretty much it. However, by making the issue seem much worse than it is and by dropping it in favor for the next "disaster" it leaves everyone feeling uneasy. So what we have are a bunch of semi informed to uninformed people who know there is a problem with the post office and they know it was never really resolved. The automatic question is what is the president going to do about it. Of course THAT ISN'T EVEN THE RIGHT QUESTION. I don't know why people think it is, but it isn't. It is congresses' responsibility to move on things like this. Yet is seems more and more that the congress and the senate have become more interested in shifting blame around and not dealing with the problems at hand.
Oh well.
In other news I am considering getting into Tomarrow's War.
Lets talk about something else. I am not sure what though I just know I am in the mood to write. Oh pop politics! That is what I wanted to talk about because this is a brilliant little topic. I came up with the idea late one night after anime club when we were talking about stuff in the parking lot. I forget how it came up but a friend of mine suddenly asked "did the post office ever start making money". This is a person who is someone who follows the tech news not the political side show abombination thing. Yet it is something he knew just enough about to think it is a problem and to wonder if it has ever been resolved. There are lots of things like this, the debt ceiling, the health care bill, and whatever else the GOP feels like making noise about.
The insidious thing about these pop political topics is that is they work on two levels. One is that there is something fundamentally wrong with our country and two is that nothing ever gets done. Lets go back to the post office point because it has some fertile territory. Now there is some interesting topics that we can debate about. Other countries have privatized their postal services to great effect and we already have Fedex and UPS in place. It is possible for our post office to make a profit and having some discussion of maybe condensing down the number of offices we have or better yet modernizing them so we need less post offices in the future. Something like that. There are lots of level headed and interesting ways this conversation can go and it is something I've had the pleasure of talking about a couple of times.
The way the debate was framed was one congressman held up a chart and asked people, "When was the last time you've been in a McDonalds? When was the last time you've been in a post office? Then he pointed at the chart comparing the number of McDonalds vs PostOffices in the US as if this is a compelling argument. I don't have the numbers and I am not getting them for you but there are MANY more post offices in the US than there are McDonalds. This was the intelectual high point of the televised debate on the topic. This was the best they could do. This was what they considered good arguement. Some asshole compared a place where you can get good fries and shitty food to a place that processes and distributes the mail with such speed and effecency that you can mail things across the country and have it get there in the same week. Your right the two are absolutely equivalent and we are all stupid for not seeing that earlier. You guys can't imagine the unbridled fury I have towards that arugment and everyone fucking went along with it like comparing apples to oranges was the thing to do. Okay enough about our failures to hold an intelectual debate, in fact I need a clean break from this paragraph.
The main point is that the post office can make money. It is possible. There is a million complex reasons why it isn't. However, all of these reasons are linked to the fact that the post office has congress as a middle mananger. The post master general can't make many changes without congressional approval and we all know how well that goes. I realize I am saying this without substantiating it and I am sorry but it is lunch time and I am running low on time. Google it and trust me you will find what I am talking about it isn't hard.
So the GOP makes massive hay out of an issue that is congress's fault as a whole and yet the squarely place the blame back on the post offiice. In this patiular case they didn't do very much to make Obama look bad directly but here is the thing you don't have to. They turned the post office into a big deal. They turned it into a massive side show and the facts were grotesquely miss represented. What is the big deal about the post office? Well it is loosing money and we should have a talk about it. That is pretty much it. However, by making the issue seem much worse than it is and by dropping it in favor for the next "disaster" it leaves everyone feeling uneasy. So what we have are a bunch of semi informed to uninformed people who know there is a problem with the post office and they know it was never really resolved. The automatic question is what is the president going to do about it. Of course THAT ISN'T EVEN THE RIGHT QUESTION. I don't know why people think it is, but it isn't. It is congresses' responsibility to move on things like this. Yet is seems more and more that the congress and the senate have become more interested in shifting blame around and not dealing with the problems at hand.
Oh well.
In other news I am considering getting into Tomarrow's War.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Yay I'mma Write Something
It isn't like I haven't been writing I just haven't been writing here. That's the rub. I considered dropping an update last night but I got started playing Dungeon Fighter Online and I was on fire so I decided to just do that instead. When you are good at that game it is SO MUCH FUN! Its player base is shrinking though and it will prolly be dead in a couple of years so I figure I should enjoy it while it is gonna last. I was talking to a friend yesterday and she was talking to me about the stuff I've been considering for awhile but haven't told anyone about. She thinks I should try making money off of blogging. It is possible. It wouldn't be this blog of course I'd start a new one and I would need a bunch of content on it before it would work out but it seems like a really good idea to me. It is something I'd been considering but I need a focus. Comics is something I love but it doesn't really work because I am a trade waiter and there is no way I am gonna start buying individual issues just so I can be current. I could do gaming but in order to do that I either need some sort of campaign game like thing going or I need to buy lots and lots of games. Neither of these seem palatable so I am going to give it a pass. So looks like it is movies. This will work out for me. It is easy to stay current with movies and there is so much to say about them. Best of all it works as a topic.
In other news my game is truckin along. I got some nice work done while I had my vacation. Tonight or tomarrow I am going to rig up some more counters so I can do some play testing on it. Right now I am hashing out the rules for heroes and stuff like that. I need to make sure that the frail heroes are frail and that the tough heroes are tough which is easy enough.
I also want to make it so that it can branch out into multiplayer territory. I am thinking of maybe using cards to buy interrupt actions on other people's turns. This is good because it keeps what is going on in a multiplayer game. Though I gotta say multiplayer games are gonna be a meat grinder type situation. That's cool though.
I'm at the point with "Paragons" where I think I can start branching out. There are some other games I want to play but don't exist yet or they exist in a form that annoys me. One is a mad scientist university worker placement game. Where the goal is to build inventions for points but each of the invensions once built give neat bonuses. Then of course there is the chance of things going terribly wrong and an invension running amok breaking/blowing things up. I think it could be really themeatic and a lot of fun. I won't lie I bought Caylus because I wanted to see how some of the other euro games work before I start designing my own.
I also want some sort of weird sports game. Like blood bowl only, well you know cheaper. Some upgraded mechanics wouldn't hurt either. I'm thinking a super hero sports league sort of deal where the action takes place over half the planet or something similar like that. Or a more toned down version involving wizards. Wiz-War is so much fun and I think it would be even more fun with an all out brawl sports theme to it. I don't know I'll do some brain storming on the matter soon. Unfortunately I am going to go back to work and do things with dishes and harass people who don't wanna be harassed.
In other news my game is truckin along. I got some nice work done while I had my vacation. Tonight or tomarrow I am going to rig up some more counters so I can do some play testing on it. Right now I am hashing out the rules for heroes and stuff like that. I need to make sure that the frail heroes are frail and that the tough heroes are tough which is easy enough.
I also want to make it so that it can branch out into multiplayer territory. I am thinking of maybe using cards to buy interrupt actions on other people's turns. This is good because it keeps what is going on in a multiplayer game. Though I gotta say multiplayer games are gonna be a meat grinder type situation. That's cool though.
I'm at the point with "Paragons" where I think I can start branching out. There are some other games I want to play but don't exist yet or they exist in a form that annoys me. One is a mad scientist university worker placement game. Where the goal is to build inventions for points but each of the invensions once built give neat bonuses. Then of course there is the chance of things going terribly wrong and an invension running amok breaking/blowing things up. I think it could be really themeatic and a lot of fun. I won't lie I bought Caylus because I wanted to see how some of the other euro games work before I start designing my own.
I also want some sort of weird sports game. Like blood bowl only, well you know cheaper. Some upgraded mechanics wouldn't hurt either. I'm thinking a super hero sports league sort of deal where the action takes place over half the planet or something similar like that. Or a more toned down version involving wizards. Wiz-War is so much fun and I think it would be even more fun with an all out brawl sports theme to it. I don't know I'll do some brain storming on the matter soon. Unfortunately I am going to go back to work and do things with dishes and harass people who don't wanna be harassed.
Friday, July 6, 2012
ALIVE!
Not the book/movie about the football team that crashed in the mountains and ate their dead just the general sort of alive. That is what I am. Heya.
So recently I haven't had very much to write about. That usually happens when I am not reading enough but I have been. I just haven't really felt the need to write about it. I mean I read a neat article about how all the agriculture in the great plains is going to vanish. That's troubling but ultimatly something I don't have an opinion on. I read a really neat article about how Walmart is using local farmers to help themselves save costs and that was cool. Again though something I am ultimatley opinionless on. I've read a smattering of other things here and there and they are neat. I've read more of DC's new 52 and there is some stuff there but not much. I love the new Wonder Woman book by the way and everyone should at least give it a shot. But I haven't wanted to go into detail about any of them. So yeah I dunno. That's changing though. It won't change now because I am going to have my lunch end before I can get into it but soon. I want to write something on Savages. I find that movie to be both maddening and interesting at the same time. It is a movie that could of been beyond epic but they failed to give the blonde haired girl any sort of personality and thus the movie rotted at it's core. I also wanted to talk about the post modern nightmare that is the new aetheist movement.
Atheists are the sort of people who have more in common with Satanists than either of them want to admit. For the most part they both look like little children railing against christiaity. What's worse is that the more serious they become the more comical they end up looking. Eventually it gets so bad that you can't help but wonder if you are taking part in some sort of brilliantly crafted Swiftian satire and any moment now you are going to get that sly wink to let you know that this is all really a joke and you aren't supposed to believe any of this crap. It doesn't come though because Atheists are very seriouse people. Not all of them of course there are some who I can get along with but for the most part it is a very dour belief. I am not an atheist because I don't need to be.
There is something to that I think. Today to be random I asked one of the little people scurrying around me is she was finding her life fulfilling. Granted my question took her off gaurd and right when I asked it she was pouring pureed muck down the garbage disposal but still. Why in gods name would you ever answer that question other than yes it is? I mean I find my life fulfilling. I am filling with laughture and curiosity. I like highly difficult games that require a lot of though and planning. I produce both creative works and intelegent thought in people, and I like to think that when I leave people their days are, for the most part, just a little bit brighter than before. I surround myself with positive people and I work to learn new things. I like my life and I find it to be highly fulfilling. I can't imagine being in a situation where I would answer that question in the negative and then do nothing about it.
Yet it happens day after day I see people who are so radically unhappy with their lives and yet they do nothing to help change it. I don't understand but then again most people can't answer the question, "What is it that you do that is so important that you shouldn't kill yourself". That is a question posed to us by Camus. I was the only person in the class who didn't need to think before coming up with reasons.
Oh well LUNCH is over and there is probably some work or something to be done.
So recently I haven't had very much to write about. That usually happens when I am not reading enough but I have been. I just haven't really felt the need to write about it. I mean I read a neat article about how all the agriculture in the great plains is going to vanish. That's troubling but ultimatly something I don't have an opinion on. I read a really neat article about how Walmart is using local farmers to help themselves save costs and that was cool. Again though something I am ultimatley opinionless on. I've read a smattering of other things here and there and they are neat. I've read more of DC's new 52 and there is some stuff there but not much. I love the new Wonder Woman book by the way and everyone should at least give it a shot. But I haven't wanted to go into detail about any of them. So yeah I dunno. That's changing though. It won't change now because I am going to have my lunch end before I can get into it but soon. I want to write something on Savages. I find that movie to be both maddening and interesting at the same time. It is a movie that could of been beyond epic but they failed to give the blonde haired girl any sort of personality and thus the movie rotted at it's core. I also wanted to talk about the post modern nightmare that is the new aetheist movement.
Atheists are the sort of people who have more in common with Satanists than either of them want to admit. For the most part they both look like little children railing against christiaity. What's worse is that the more serious they become the more comical they end up looking. Eventually it gets so bad that you can't help but wonder if you are taking part in some sort of brilliantly crafted Swiftian satire and any moment now you are going to get that sly wink to let you know that this is all really a joke and you aren't supposed to believe any of this crap. It doesn't come though because Atheists are very seriouse people. Not all of them of course there are some who I can get along with but for the most part it is a very dour belief. I am not an atheist because I don't need to be.
There is something to that I think. Today to be random I asked one of the little people scurrying around me is she was finding her life fulfilling. Granted my question took her off gaurd and right when I asked it she was pouring pureed muck down the garbage disposal but still. Why in gods name would you ever answer that question other than yes it is? I mean I find my life fulfilling. I am filling with laughture and curiosity. I like highly difficult games that require a lot of though and planning. I produce both creative works and intelegent thought in people, and I like to think that when I leave people their days are, for the most part, just a little bit brighter than before. I surround myself with positive people and I work to learn new things. I like my life and I find it to be highly fulfilling. I can't imagine being in a situation where I would answer that question in the negative and then do nothing about it.
Yet it happens day after day I see people who are so radically unhappy with their lives and yet they do nothing to help change it. I don't understand but then again most people can't answer the question, "What is it that you do that is so important that you shouldn't kill yourself". That is a question posed to us by Camus. I was the only person in the class who didn't need to think before coming up with reasons.
Oh well LUNCH is over and there is probably some work or something to be done.
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