Life on Autopilot

Haven’t done one of these posts in a while.  Posts about my own existential view on the world.  There is something about not being wanted, sexually.  Something about being a titan who isn’t all that much in the looks department leaves me getting almost no interest in fooling around.  Who knew?  But there is an upside to it all.  It offers one a chance to see things with a good deal more clarity than most people will ever have.  It’s not their fault that they don’t have clarity.  It’s just biology.

It’s quite simple, really – the human mind is programmed to want sex.  Because we want sex, when we have the chance to have it, we don’t want to lose that.  I know how strong that pull is.  However, House was right when he said that there are two things that people get stupid for – money and sex.  So, when one doesn’t have any interest or options in that department, it opens up an entirely new dichotomy of thought because one doesn’t have to worry about what it all means.

I have figured out why women tend to go for jerks over nice guys.  Don’t worry, ladies, this isn’t going to be me attacking you.  In fact, the reasons that you go for jerks isn’t mean-spirited at all.  I’ve always been of the belief that women are practical.  They like things to work in an efficient way.  They like things to be very direct and straight-forward.  I’ve always admired that.  They generally tend to take the most direct path to get what they want.  The most direct is not always something that required brute force, metaphorically speaking.  The direct path is the path that gets them the most gain for the least amount of effort.  Don’t think I’m calling you lazy.  I’m calling you smart.  Women generally tend to act with their logical processes.  Men, on the other hand, tend to just run in and care about the problems later.

Here’s the difference between nice guys and jerks – jerks get things done.  There is this really enlightening book called “Assholeology.”  It is a comedy book, but if you read it, the real-world applications are actually kind of profound.  Jerks is another word for assholes.  This book has some pretty smart reasons why assholes get ahead.  Jerks have very clear goals.  Jerks have a plan to get those goals.  Jerks don’t care what the consequences are.  Jerks will pursue that goal, regardless.  That is something that I naturally can see why women gravitate toward.  Guys who have a clear direction and are determined is going to be a group that they will get along with, by nature.  It’s the way of the world.

For those ladies who think that I am still attacking you, don’t.  Your reasons aren’t bad ones.  If anything, they’re logical.  They make sense to me.  That doesn’t make it any easier, because I am a nice guy, but I am starting to understand.  With understanding comes peace of mind.  I now understand my role in the world.

Nice guys are the guides to those that they care about.  They are those who give of themselves, knowing that they will never get what they give back.  They are the ones who try with all their might to make others happy, with the understanding that they cannot have that in kind.  The world is just too mean-spirited of a place for that.  This role is thankless, in every sense of the word.  Nice guys are the ones on the bottom who are perpetually kept their by the people who run the world – jerks.

Jerks are powerful.  Jerks don’t let the little issues like whether something is right or wrong stop them from doing whatever the fuck they want.  It is an admirable trait, in many respects.  Part of me wishes that I could be like that.  Life would get a LOT easier.  But it’s not who I am.

So, I continue one.  I keep going down that road, waiting to see what tomorrow has.  Like Urdnot Bakara, I am sustained by hope.  Hope that tomorrow will be better.  And if tomorrow is not better, there is always the next day.  It will be like this until we are ash that has spread across the winds and been forgotten by the world.  Never to be in the minds of the people we worked so hard to save, forevermore.

Being in love taught me something.  When Camille was still alive, her and I were a strange couple.  We both hated the world so much.  Our mutual hatred of it was a common talking point between the two of us.  We fed each other’s depression.  Maybe that is why her death has damaged me as much as it has.  We both were feeding the very worst qualities of the other, and now we are both irrevocably tainted by this.  Well, just me, now.  She has passed on from this world.  If there is something after all of this, I mean to find her again.  I mean to say sorry.  Sorry that things got so bad between us, toward the end.  Sure, she lied to me, betrayed my trust.  But why be angry, in the end?  Not worth it.

I live life on autopilot.  No particular direction.  No particular destination.  I see my life as a highway across a natural landscape.  Though the landscape changes from time to time as I walk down it, this road continues onward.  I have no idea where this road will take me, but I keep going.  Sometimes the landscape is beautiful, and I sit and enjoy it for as long as I can.  Other times, it is lifeless and I feel very alone.  But the road continues, and we continue on it, as that point inevitably comes where we no longer continue.  Where our ability to go on living ceases.  I do not lament that.  My morality is not something that frightens me.  It is the score that all of us get to settle up with after a while.

So, when I go, I tell people – do not mourn for me.  Life is too short for that.  Instead, when that day does come that my end approaches, take a moment and remember what I did.  Then, let me slide from your memory as the thoughts of living take over.  I am one of those people who is somehow very easy for people to forget, even though I am a titan.  I take that for what I will.

Until next time, a quote,

“Wheel of life.  Popular Salarian concept.  Similar to human Hinduism in focus on reincarnation.  Appealing to see life as endless.  Fix mistakes in next life.  Learn, adapt, improve.  Refuse to believe life ends here.  Too wasteful.  Have more to offer.  Mistakes to fix.  Cannot end here.”  -Mordin Solus, Mass Effect 2

Peace out,

Maverick

RE: The Thaw

Well, a bunch of Christian kids has decided to make a video about how Christianity is under attack in America, and how they need to stand up to it.  The name of the video is “The Thaw.”  Ugh…

I am going to do this post like I have done others.  We will do a hit for hit with their words, where they say something and I respond.  Let’s get started.

Christianity is being completely frozen out of America.

Since 70% of Americans identify themselves as Christian and you can’t get to office in this country without sucking religion’s dick, I’m going to call BS on that one.  But let’s hear more.  Oh, by the way, there are a lot of people who talk in this video, so when I make a point about different people talking, take it in stride.

Why can’t I pray in school?!

Who’s stopping you?

Why do I have to check my religion at the door?

So many speakers, so many questions.  None of them smart or right.

Why can’t I write about God in my school papers?

Again, who’s stopping you?  You all talk about this stuff but have NO sources to back your claims up.

Why do I have to tolerate people cursing my God, but am not allowed to talk about my God and my faith.

Okay, fuck it.  Let’s just get this all out in the open.  Everything that these kids said was bullshit.  You are allowed to pray in schools.  Nobody is stopping you.  Here is what is not allowed to happen – you are not allowed to have teacher-led mandatory prayer.  Public schools cannot openly support a religion.  The fundies have been throwing this lie around for as long as I have been alive.  If a student wants to pray or talk about God or whatever, they are allowed to do that.  My school had a couple of bible-study groups who met after school.  I knew a girl who wrote a paper on why God is so awesome and we are so bad.  It got a bad grade, but that wasn’t because it was about God.  I read her paper.  Her grammar was awful!  For real, I guess that God didn’t give this girl good editing tips.  Oh, and she didn’t use any quotes from any other materials.  Any good essay should be backed up by sources.  Last I checked, the Bible is a source.  It has been used well, in several religious papers.  And before you call foul because I am an atheist, I was an English major before becoming a journalism major.  I’ve read a lot of essays.

But yeah, nothing that these kids say is true.  You are allowed to pray.  You don’t have to leave your religion at the door.  You can talk about your God all you want.  But at a public school, funded by public money, the faculty cannot endorse a religion or require religion to be mandatory.  Can we please stop pandering this bullshit to the Christards who want to think that they are some kind of oppressed minority?

Why are they taking God out of my history books?

Uh, I don’t know.  Maybe it’s because of the fact that God is not real, and we want ACTUAL history being taught to students.  For real, America already doctors the shit out of history for their curriculum.  Like how they make Christopher Columbus seem like a great guy, when the truth is that he has more in common with Hitler than any of us.  So yeah, that’s just dumb.

Why do they teach every other theory in science except creation?

Gee, maybe it’s because the Theory of Evolution is actual science with a metric ton of data to support it, while the belief that a magical sky-wizard created the universe has absolutely NO evidence to support it at all!  If you want to learn about pseudo-science, some schools offer religious courses.  But don’t demand that your bullshit be taught as something that has actual basis in reality.  There was no creation.  The “Theory of Creation” is nothing but a crackpot theory that doesn’t even count as pseudo-science.  It isn’t science at all.  I mean, think about it – he spends seven days creating this one planet and all the things on it, but an entire universe, with a googleplex of stars and planets, organized into trillions upon trillions of galaxies, that was just an afterthought.  Does that sound like science to you?  Of course not.  And that is why it isn’t being taught in public schools.

Why am I called names because I believe in marriage the way God designed it?

I don’t know.  Maybe it’s because you’re a bigot.  And the kid who says this looks like he is at that point where puberty is a new thing.  And when he discovers internet porn, and is jerking off to two chicks having sex, I will feel so good pointing out that he is also a hypocrite too.  But for the Christian, that means nothing.  They will impose their values onto others because Gawd tells them to.  Yeah, I could have swore that Jesus said something about loving your neighbors and your enemies and not trying to ruin their lives.  Consistency, what’s that?!

Some even call us hateful.  Hypocrites.  Unloving.  Close-minded.  Bigots.

I have yet to hear a term that doesn’t apply to you, so yeah, that’s accurate.

Why can’t Tim Tebow praise God after making a touchdown without causing a national uproar?

What the fuck are you talking about?  Last I checked, most people thought that that guy was just the most awesome thing since sliced bread.  In what universe is he this hated guy who prays to the guy that an overwhelming majority of people worship?

The football coach at Ridgeland High School, in Georgia, was investigated by the school board.  Did he abuse a student?  Is he a terrorist?  He allowed local churches to feed his football team.  *group gasp*

Wow, what ego-stroking bullshit.  So, I looked this story up.  This story is such a non-issue that it is kind of amazing.  There was no “investigation.”  A group complained and it ended there.  A complaint was issued, it was dealt with and there was no big investigation.  Not to mention, are you saying that there are people who are with the idea that the government is cracking down on religion?  For as much as politicians suck religion’s big fat cock, that REALLY doesn’t hold water.

At public school, I’m called ‘lesbian,’ or ‘gay’ for not kissing or for wanting to save myself for marriage.

Wait…what?  What school do you go to where this is the case?  Back in my days at a public high school, girls who didn’t “save themselves for marriage” were slut-shamed and harassed by the other girls who believe that Gawd just loved them.  Never mind that they weren’t slutty at all.  They were just honest about who they are.  And the biggest sluts in high school had the Bible at the top of their beloved-books list.  Not to mention “save myself for marriage”?  What the fuck is this, the 17th century?

Abstinence doesn’t work.  It has never worked.  The reason is simple – we are human beings.  We have urges.  Deny that long enough and your mind finds ways around it.  That’s the reason that SO many religious girls in high school get pregnant.  And don’t even compare yourselves to the trouble that actual gays and lesbians face from you religious zealots.  My friend Zero got the shit kicked out of her by a bunch of girls who knew that she was a lesbian.  Zero knows how to fight, but the girls got their boyfriends to help.  It was “god’s mission.”  I don’t feel bad for having my own people beat the shit out of their boyfriends’, slash the tires of all their cars and isolate each of them, with the express understanding that if they hurt my friend again, I would be taking parts off.  I was young, immature and angry, but nobody hurts my friends.  So yeah, fuck you.

In public school, people are rude and disrespectful toward Christians.  Bullying is common.

Okay, stop right there!  I call bullshit!  I cannot begin to tell you how many of the bullies at my school counted God among their best friends and called him their “lord and savior.”  Whenever a gay kid got bullied, it was a Christian.  When my lesbian friend got beaten, they thought it was a mission from God.  A girl who got pregnant in high-school, I guarantee you that it was Christians front-and-center slut-shaming her.  There was this kid whose family was Muslim, and he got bullied and harassed in ways you can’t imagine.  I took that kid into my fold after I saw how bad it got.  Nobody, and I do mean nobody, fucks with the friend group of a guy like me.  I am a titan.  I was a titan back in high school.  Nobody messed with my in-crowd.  And I made sure that people knew that this kid was a part of it.

The Christians absolutely love this narrative that goes that they are somehow the victims of oppression, when it is they themselves who are oppressing others.  LGBT rights aren’t being blocked by atheists.  It is being blocked by Christians, Muslims and especially the Mormons.  Some of the most hardcore activism against gay rights has been by the Mormons.  This narrative makes Christians feel good.  America loves to be the victims.  We love to have a narrative we can tell ourselves that makes us feel like we are the victims of some horrible crime.  Sadly, it isn’t true.  But let’s continue.

What we see in our health classes. ‘Sex education.’  4th grade and up.  Is pornography.

Wow, when the posters in a sex-ed classroom are viewed as pornography, then I am starting to think that Christians really are afraid of their own reproductive organs.  I mean, this is just pathetic.  I bet half of Christians don’t even like saying the words “penis” or “vagina.”  Can we make a deal, Christians?  I will work harder not to attack you, if you will please just TRY and be a little more mature.

People make fun of me because I don’t believe in abortion!

What universe are these kids from, exactly?  I mean, really?!  Because, again, in my experience in a public high school, it was the Christians picking on the people who weren’t against abortion.  And god-help you (pun intended) if you were a girl who got outed when you had one.  The wrath of the Christards was almost…biblical.  Again, pun intended.

In public school, people believe Christians are goodie-goods and boring.

Okay, they have finally said something that is true.  Among my in-group, anyway.  Since Christians were never really bullied and were instead the bullies, it was an idea we kept to ourselves.  But still, yeah, they are goodie-goods and boring.  Well, those who aren’t like the people in this video, that is.  And those who think like them.  The people who are spewing this bullshit are bigots and hypocrites who want to play themselves off as victims.  But for the rest, who aren’t in my face, then yeah, I am down with that thought process.

Dirty jokes fill the hallways between classes.  During class.  Before school.  At lunch.  After school.  On the bus.  Off the bus.

Boo-fucking-hoo, you little crybaby.  If you don’t like people telling dirty jokes, here’s a radical thought – don’t listen!

Get the idea?

Oh.  So this is meant to say that we should all moderate our behavior so that you don’t have to feel offended.  Well, I got news for you, Christard kids – you don’t get to make that demand!  You don’t control my behavior!  It’s a free country, and we are allowed to joke about what we want, when we want.  Don’t like it, go somewhere else.  It’s not like we are holding a gun to your head and saying, “listen to this fucking joke, bitch!”  So yeah, another mute point made to show how you are the victims.

Despite modern popular belief, America WAS founded as a Christian nation.

No it wasn’t.  Almost none of our Founding Fathers were Christian.  Thomas Jefferson was a deist.  Thomas Paine was a deist.  John Adams was a Unitarian.  Ben Franklin was a  deist.  And not one place in the Constitution does it say that this country is a Christian nation.  You Christians have been rallying this point to death!  And you are wrong!  When I point out the 1st Amendment, people often come back at me with this line -

It’s freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion!

Wow, it’s like you all can’t stop to think.  Two words, so similar in their meaning.  And they didn’t say that we have freedom of religion.  The 1st Amendment says that government “shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  That clear enough for you?  If America was founded in support of Christianity, then I figure that Jesus or his baby-daddy would be mentioned somewhere.  But they aren’t!  This point is dumb!  But back to the video.

No one would dare not to stand, place their hand over their heart, and recite the pledge.

The kid who says this puts his hand over his shoulder.  So smart.

America was founded as a force for good.

Tell that to the millions of Native Americans that the Europeans slaughtered.  Or how about we tell it to the millions of civilians in the Middle East who have been victims of George Bush II and his newest crusade into their countries, killed by our soldiers.  Or maybe we could ask the slaves that we brutally took from their homes and absolutely ravaged in this country.  Let’s ask them how much America is a “force for good.”

America was once the force for hope in the world.

And now we are being left behind by the rest of the Western World, because we can’t get our shit together.  This post has gone on a little long already, so let’s skip ahead to the end.

We are an army.  Christ is our commander.  His will is our charge.  We are impacting our friends.  Our family.  Our community.  Our state.  Our country.  We’re in a war for the hearts and souls of our generation.  And we know it.

Since there is no God, no Christ or any of that, you won’t be taking your orders from him.  Instead, you’ll take it from other people.  People who are corrupt, have a stake in holding society back and are living like kings because of it.  Oh, fuck, they are living WAY better than the king’s back in Jesus’ day ever did.  You are weak, weak-minded and stupid.  But thanks to the internet, who is not at ALL a nice animal, your bullshit is being taken apart.  People are too informed to buy into your crap.  And that is all the better.

Until next time, a quote,

“Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it’s wonderful when someone says, ‘I’m willing, Lord! I’ll do whatever you want me to do!’ Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas. And anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you, you don’t. How can I be so sure? Because I don’t know, and you do not possess mental powers that I do not.”  -Bill Maher, Religulous

Peace out,

Maverick

What is Love?

Before you ask, no, I am not going to do the ‘Baby Don’t Hurt Me’ pun.  It’s been done to death.  Even if it is an obscure reference.  I have asked what really controversial topics are, like what is God? (fake) What is Faith? (Ignorance) and I am even working on a post called What is Death? (the end) But probably the most talked-about thing that has ever been in the history of the human race is this – what is love?  From the shitty pop artists of today to the great poets of the past, it seems like love is the just the awesome thing in the history of ever.  All of humanity imbues love with sacrosanct status.  The idea is that all of life is designed for the express purpose of this chemical interaction in the brain.

Speaking of the brain, let’s start there.  The reality is that love isn’t one thing.  We like to think that it is, but it’s not.  There are multiple aspects to it that need to be addressed.  The first is lust.  When you see somebody who you are sexually attracted to, your relationship may start there.  Unless you are a genuinely nice guy.  In which case, you will be friend-zoned and passed over for jerks.  Life’s a bitch.  But the basis of all romantic love is lust.  There is not a single piece of romantic love that hasn’t started there.  And I can see so many of you already commenting that I’m wrong.  You will talk about how that doesn’t matter.  Well, let me call bullshit and pass you off.  If it didn’t start there, then the human race would have died out long ago.  We are programmed to be sexually attracted to certain things.  I hear a lot of women say that intelligence is sexy.  Yeah, I have yet to hear any of those women say that Steven Hawking is hot.

So, it starts out with lust.  But then there is another part of human behavior that is programmed into us – bonding.  Romantic bonds are formed due to another primal behavior for us to find mates and carry on our genetic code.  I am one of those people who says that the primal instincts to have as many mates as possible affects men and women equally.  Women will say that guys only want one thing, but the truth is that they are just as sexually open-minded as men.  They just won’t admit it.  Their loss.  We were programmed to have as many mates as possible.  The idea is that we find the best mates to continue our genetic code.  It is one of the many reasons that I think that monogamy is outdated.  We fight against our primal nature because of 2,000 years of “moral” guidance for western society.  Namely religion.  Hence the quotes around “moral.”

A romantic bond cannot remain as strong as it started forever.  That’s the cold truth.  Again, I can already hear so many of you who are getting ready to refute this.  But the cold truth about this is that since we are designed to seek multiple mates, we will start to want something new.  We are constantly fighting against our nature to have the romantic structure that we do have.  To overcome our natural tendency to want something else, people have to do a simple action – no longer see the person they are with as a romantic partner.  Instead, they become a best friend.  That is how marriages last.  It all comes down to brain chemistry.

For all the grandiosity that we try and bestow on love, the reality is that love is nothing more than brain chemistry.  But why does society want to believe that love is so wonderful?  Well, as I see it, the reason is simple – life sucks.  It really does.  Life is a giant grinding pain in the ass that we all have to suffer through.  Love is an emotion that makes one feel so amazing.  It raises people up.  It makes days brighter.  It makes the entire world seem like a better place, even if only for a little while.  Love is the emotion that gives so much to so many.  When you have to go to a shitty job and deal with shitty people, what is better than coming home to a person who cares?  That is the reason that logic goes out the window when people fall in love.  People will do whatever it takes to keep love in their lives.  So many horribly bad choices are made for love.  The reason is because people want to believe that it means something.

I was once a very profound romantic.  That part of me is dead and buried.  I have no part of me that believes that love is worth all the effort that people go through to have it.  I talk to people who are head-over-brain in love, and so many bad decisions are made.  I see train-wrecks that are coming, but do they listen?  No.  Of course not.  Tell somebody that they are on the wrong course and they will naturally rebel against it.

So, what is love?  Is it brain chemistry?  Is it a profound philosophical concept?  Is it the fabric that keeps our world together?  Is it all you need?  Is it everything?  The answer is that it is none of those things.  Love is the thing that keeps people from slipping into despair.  Love is the way that people avoid hurting.  Love is the thing that gives people’s life purpose, because they have nothing else.  Love is a means to an end.  Love is the way that people can deny that life hurts them.  Love is how they will see that things are better.

Love is ignorance.  The same way that religion and faith are.  It feels good, but that’s it.  It feels good.  Beyond that, why do we care so much?  Don’t think that I am insulting you by saying that it is ignorance.  Lies are what keeps the world running.  The lies that we tell others, and the ones we tell ourselves.  I won’t shame that on anyone.  It’s how we survive.  And that’s all I have to say.

Until next time, a quote,

“I imagine John Watson thinks love’s a mystery to me, but the chemistry is incredibly simple and very destructive…I’ve always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage. Thank you for the final proof.”  -Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock

Peace out,

Maverick

The Mother’s Day Dissonance

Dissonance, that is the word that I would use to describe my thoughts on this holiday.  Don’t think that I am going to be criticizing it on its merits or just saying that it’s dumb.  Far from it.  And I also want to point out that I am not in any way criticizing your mothers or what they have done in your life.  There are a ton of amazing mothers in the world who have done great things for their kids.  But at the same time, it must be recognized that there are also a ton of deadbeat moms who mess their kids up and are a detriment to their kids’ lives.  But here is the thing that gives me dissonance about this holiday – why is somebody just being a mother celebrated?

For those among you who want to do the knee-jerk reaction that they gave birth to the kid, don’t.  So do dogs, cats, snakes, sharks and army ants.  If anything, the queen of an ant colony should get a lot more respect if simply bearing children is why this is a celebrated holiday.  They bear thousands of them.  Most queens bear hundreds of off-spring per day.  So yeah, that is not a good criteria for why there should be a special day for them.

Perhaps it is being a parent.  That reason does make some sense to me.  Honoring the parents in your life who make your life what it is is a wonderful thing to do.  But why one parent in-particular?  Since I won’t be making a post about it, I should point out that this post is also a commentary on Father’s Day.  Another day that has the same problems as this one.  Though it can’t be defended as easily as Mother’s Day can.

However, the problem in celebrating this day because of the good mothers doesn’t hold up because as I have pointed out, not all of them are good.  Some of them are pieces of shit.  My late fiance was abandoned at a group home with her little sister because her mother couldn’t take care of them.  Part of me still wants to find their mother and kick the shit out of her for abandoning her kid, because she couldn’t get clean off of drugs and look after them.  But let’s not drill into the past.  I am hashing this out because I am trying to look for a good metric to have this holiday be what it is on merits alone.

When I brought this up to a friend of mine, she pointed out that religious implications.  In most religions, the mother has a special place that is supposed to be honored.  Most religions see them as sacred because they can create new life.  I guess the writers of their text didn’t know that it takes two, and that the father is equally-important to provide both the genetic material but also in creation.  While the mother may carry the offspring, it cannot be denied that the father is just as important in the creation of it.  Not to mention that I am not a religious person.

Since religion means nothing to me, as I am a man of science, how am I supposed to accept that one parental-unit should be honored exclusively for that reason?  Similarly, how can I accept that the other parental-unit should also be given a special day as well?  There is no direct correlation between a holiday and a group of people existing.

So, what do I think should happen?  Well, to be honest, I think that we should scrap both Mother’s and Father’s day.  Instead, since there are some mothers and some fathers who are worthless sacks of garbage who do nothing but bring pain and misery, I have a different idea – Parent’s Day.  A day that honors the contributions of your parents and all that they have given you.  A day that recognizes that you are who you are because of what they gave you.

For those who want to call foul because the same problems that I said before are prevalent here, I think that this holiday undercuts them, to an extent.  If one of your parents suck, then you can recognize the other.  If both of them do, then you only have one day to have that point ground home in your mind.

Like I said, I’m not criticizing your parents or saying that this holiday is worthless.  Recognizing what your parents have done for you is something that we all should do.  But a parent isn’t worth recognizing because they exist.  This is tied into my thoughts on respect.  Respect is earned.  It isn’t given just because of who somebody is, or their relation to you.  Whenever somebody tells me to respect my elders, I want to almost laugh.  Why?  Because they’re older?  That does NOT entitle them to respect.  Similarly, a parent just being a parent doesn’t mean that we should treat them with some sort of unearned respect.

Don’t take this personal.  I mean no offense to anyone.  Just think about it.  That’s all I ask.

Until next time, a quote,

“Get to know your parents.  You never know when they’ll be gone for good.”  -Baz Luhrmann, Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen 

Peace out,

Maverick

Self-Indulgent and Overstated Nerdrage: The Transformers Movies

When I bring up my reasons for hating these movies with people in conversations, a lot of people try to play it off.  There are a lot of excellent reasons not to like these movies.  The rampant racism is one great reason.  The blatant objectification of women, combined with the blatant sexism is another.  Or we could talk about how these movies pretty much butt-rape the source material.  But for me, that isn’t why I hate these films so much.  The reason that I hate them as much as I do is because, in the movies, Optimus Prime is pure evil.

Before you go off on me, hear me out.  In the first film, him and his cohorts get to Earth.  They are tracking down the Decepticons.  Okay.  But why are they here, anyway?  Well, they’re here for the Allspark.  They want this device for the express purpose of rebuilding their home.  They don’t seem to care if they kill us to get it.  Though that brings up the point – we are holding it.  Something I didn’t think about in the film is that this whole problem could have been amended if humanity had thought to strike up a deal with the Decepticons.  We give you your gizmo back, along with some of our machines and you can go home and make nice with rebuilding Cybertron.  For real, that would have made the entire situation SO much easier.  We even had the Decepticon leader in our custody, using liquid nitrogen to keep him frozen.  The Decepticons wanted their gizmo and their leader back.  Now, Megatron had nothing but contempt for us, but what he wanted, at heart, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

So, his people attack our forces, to get their device back.  The only device with a chance of saving their people and rebuilding their home.  You know, from an outside perspective, that doesn’t sound so bad.  But let’s take a look at the Autobots in contrast.  The Autobots come here to destroy them.  They say it is to protect us, but Megatron and his forces don’t want to stay here.  They want to go and rebuild their home.  Sure, his methods are extreme, but at its heart, it is not THAT bad.  Meanwhile, think about this – how many Autobots did Megatron kill?  One.  That’s right, just one.  He only destroyed one Autobot.  Meanwhile, how many Decepticons did the Autobots and Optimus personally kill?  Well, the numbers aren’t totally clear, but it is at least over 5.

Not only that, but for somebody who seems to be all about peace, Optimus sure does embrace killing his enemies without mercy, doesn’t he?  Don’t believe me?  Well, let’s look at the second film, Revenge of the Fallen.  In this one, it opens with the Autobots hunting the Decepticons down.  For real, they aren’t hurting anybody.  They are just hiding out, trying to go unnoticed.  You find out that they are also looking for their fallen leader at the same time, but still.  The Autobots attack them relentlessly and without mercy.  If you think about it, all of the unbelievably huge amounts of collateral damage and god-knows how many civilians kills in their little mission (which is in China.  I guess killing innocent people in America isn’t cool with Michael Bay), in a ruthless hunt to destroy their enemy makes them look like the aggressor, doesn’t it?

But it gets better.  Megatron has lost the single-best chance he had to bring back his home.  His forces are being slaughtered by the Autobots, without their side taking a casualty.  Optimus Prime even does a suck-America’s-cock move and drops out of a plane to lay the beat-down on one of them.  Now, he reaches out to another.  Somebody who he is sure can lead to bringing his people back.  Oh, and this is after they bring him back from the dead, after Shia LaBitch killed him.

So, a plan is set in motion.  Since they can’t rebuild their numbers without a proper energy source, a drastic plan is called for.  This plan is to blow up our star and harvest the energy crystals that would be created by it.  This plan is a little insane, but think about it – what other choice did Megatron have?  By destroying the Allspark, he now is having to resort to tactics that are repugnant because he doesn’t want to see his race die.  The Autobots stop his plan, but then you see Optimus.  The hero that kids are supposed to look up to.  He appears at the last minute and not only brutally and ruthlessly kills the Fallen but he also mutilates Megatron, who you are told is his brother in this universe, in the process.

Now we get to the last film, Dark of the Moon.  In this one, we get to see how truly evil Optimus is.  Megatron is beyond desperate.  All of his chances to save his people are gone.  So, he strikes up a deal with Sentinel Prime.  He is going to bring Cybertron to Earth and enslave humanity to get them to work to restore his planet.  This isn’t a good plan.  But it’s all he has left.  Meanwhile, you have the Autobots doing what, exactly?  Well, instead of their last mission, which was to exterminate the Decepticons, they have decided that they are going to go and kill America’s enemies instead.  For real, the Autobots charge in to a Middle Eastern base and open fire on an enemy who isn’t shooting back!  They basically decided to simply kill people instead of just using their size and being intimidating to get them to surrender.  I know that I wouldn’t raise my gun to a giant mech with blasters.

The Autobots stop the Decepticon’s plan and then you have Optimus.  Sentinel is kicking his ass.  He is pwning him completely.  Right as Sentinel is about to destroy him, who saves him?  Megatron!  Acting as a good brother, he goes in and saves a man who has done nothing but stop his efforts to rebuild his home and murdered his people, often in cold blood.  Megatron saves his life and then tells him that he wants to talk truce.  He wants there to be peace, because at this point, their home is now destroyed and this is the only thing he can do.  What does Optimus do in response?  He takes an axe and decapitates Megatron without mercy.  But it gets better.  He then takes the gun of Sentinel Prime, who you found out was seen as a father-figure by Optimus, and kills him too.  And he doesn’t just shoot him.  He shoots him twice, to make sure that he was really dead.

Both of these character, Megatron and Sentinel Prime, were no longer a threat to Optimus.  He had no reason to kill them.  He just does it anyway, because he can.  That is evil on a staggering level.  But if you look at the films that Michael Bay makes, it makes sense.

This is the kind of thing that Michael Bay thinks that kids should look up to.  A character who will kill his own brother and father-figure in cold blood when they both mean him no harm.  I won’t pretend like the original cartoon was a masterpiece.  It was corny and silly fun.  But at least that cartoon had characters who had values that we can look up to.  These movies have characters who will kill their enemy without mercy, claiming that it was their enemy who was hostile.  They have a simple solution to get rid of a problem and they don’t take it.  And their leader, Optimus Prime is a man who kills not only his father-figure, but also his own brother in cold blood and without a second thought.  What is there to look up to in that.

I could almost forgive the sexism, racism and homophobia in those movies, because they aren’t made to be anything but dumb action films.  But when you butt-rape a show like this and make the characters in it into amoral monsters, that just pisses me off.  And now I hear that Michael Bay is making a fourth movie.  What will be the plot of this one?  Optimus paints an American flag on his armor and makes the world America’s slave?  I mean, if these movies didn’t go so far out of their way to suck America’s cock, one might miss that.

Until next time, a quote,

“Movie Optimus is a terrible person.  Beyond terrible, really.  Throughout these movies, Optimus has pushed Megatron to the point of desperation.  All he’s ever wanted is to rebuild Cybertron.  Sure, he’s had some horrifically misguided methods, but Optimus has killed more Decepticons in these movies than he has Autobots.  And now, Optimus has murdered not only his own brother in cold blood, but his father-figure as well.  All while both of them showed no intention whatsoever of doing him further harm.”  -Alex Christ, Transformers: Dark of the Moon [FRANCHISE FAILURE]

Peace out,

Maverick

Abercrombie & Fitch won’t sell Plus-Size Clothing. So What?

The most recent scandal that the internet has seen fit to go ape-shit over is the new fact that it has been revealed that Abercrombie and Fitch is not going to be making clothing for plus-size women.  Turns out that the only reason that they made slightly larger clothing for men was to get football players and the sort to buy their boring-ass brand.  Apparently it is on record that they don’t want heavier women to wear their clothing.  And naturally, this has all the equal-rights advocates for this sort of thing up in arms.  Uh, question, why do you care?

Has anyone who reads this blog ever seen an Abercrombie and Fitch ad?  This is a brand who doesn’t sell clothing.  They sell a personal identity.  Well, the identity they sell is – we have no personal interests that are worth anything, so we might as well be attractive!  For real, have you ever seen anything even approaching an identity that this brand sells?  Their logo is the ONLY recognizable thing about their brand.  But that’s a logo.

Think about this – goths.  Goths wear all black, lots of chains and usually have black makeup.  For how silly a look that is, at least it is a look.  It is a unique look.  Or there is the vampire night club scene.  Yeah, I have been to some of those.  Met some WEIRD-ass people there.  But again, each of them had their own individual identity.  Some took themselves WAY too seriously.  Some were just having fun and getting to be weird with their friends.  Either way, it was a unique look.

What identity, per se, does Abercrombie and Fitch sell?  Well, since their clothes are boring-as-fuck, aside from sporting their logo, they support a rather common-place identity here in America – the “I’m going to blend in because I’m too afraid to stand alone” identity.  That’s how they can justify selling a shirt for $60.  I mean, why would people pay that much for something boring?  I pay a lot for shoes, but that’s because I am a titan.  I can’t afford normal shoes that you get in the store.  Because I’m not drowning in money, if I could, I would be buying much cheaper shoes.  But they don’t make titan shoes for cheap.

And another thing – when has Abercrombie and Fitch ever sold plus-size clothing for women?  For real, at what point did this label actually sell anything for women who aren’t stick-figures?  Never, to my knowledge.  So why is this now becoming such a big issue?  I ask because if this company sells the brand that you should fit in with the rest, why do you want to be a part of that?

I think that this ties into a larger issue – people’s need to belong.  It is a part of human nature.  We’re pack-animals.  We want to find places where we can fit in.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  After all, our pack mentality is the reason for our success as a species.  It is also a reason that ants should scare the shit out of us.  But at the same time, we choose to find packs, even when those packs aren’t working for our betterment.

The reality here is that this shouldn’t be an issue.  If this company doesn’t want to have a certain kind of clothing, that will reflect in their profits.  If Abercrombie & Fitch wants to only have their brand associated with skinny women and muscle-guys, then the public will choose whether or not to buy their clothing.

And at the end of the day, remember – the people who like this crap are losers who have no ability to be on their own and no ability to stand apart.  While our pack-mentality has gotten us where we are, innovation comes from thinking outside the box.  This brand represents the box.  In every single sense of the word.

Until next time, a quote,

“He was a funny man with a certain flare for life. Epictetus compared people who ‘fit in’ to the white threads of a toga. Indistinguishable. He wanted to be the purple thread. ‘That small part which is bright, and makes all the rest appear graceful and beautiful. Why then,’ he asked, ‘do you tell me to make myself like the many? And if I do, how shall I still be purple?’”  -Alan Shore, Boston Legal

Peace out,

Maverick

The Small Moments

Being an unrequited romantic, whose romantic side has more or less died on the vine, I have a lot of thoughts about those little moments that we get in life.  See, the truth is that life is merely a collection of moments.  There are good moments, bad moments and moments that show us for who we really are.  All of these moments are connected by one thing – the small moments.  For clarity’s sake, let me define what the small moments are.  The small moments are those brief, almost unnoticeable points in time that you are given to comprehend a situation.  It is a point where you are seeing what is coming and can prepare yourself.  And it is my personal belief that the small moments are the moments that make life worth anything.

Take a small moment I had on Saturday night.  I was taking a friend to the airport.  This is a girl that I have gotten very close to recently.  She is leaving, and I don’t know when, if ever, she will return.  I thought that this was going to be an unbelievably miserable experience.  In some respects, it was.  But there was a small moment that occurred between us, right before a major moment that I still am thinking about.  All the time.

I have synesthesia.  It can occur in any number of ways, but for me, it occurs when I taste something.  Whenever I taste anything, there is a reaction where I see a color.  All tastes have colors.  The best tastes have the color blue.  The worst tastes have the colors brown, orange, pink and yellow.  Now, this doesn’t affect me with things like my own spit, because that has taste.  My body just got used to it.  Lord knows, I’ve had this body long enough.

One neat bi-product of this condition is that all the people that I’ve kissed have taste to, and each one has their own unique color.  So, this girl and I had talked about this before.  It was a passing conversation that we both enjoyed.  One of many.  But tonight, with the future of us being able to see each other very much in question, she got proactive.  She wanted to know her color.  Our friendship was tight enough where she could trust me with this.

The small moment came as I said that I was up for it and that the next move was hers.  She came closer and that is when it hit.  Right as we were barely apart, that small moment occurred.  It was…amazing.  Nothing short of breath-taking.  The look in her eyes were just amazing.  And that kiss was incredible.  I haven’t had a kiss that good in a LONG time.

But right after that, there was another small moment.  When it ended, and I was feeling like this was the best thing that could have happened, she kissed me again.  She already had the information that she wanted.  I told her her color.  Velvet red.  What a beautiful color.  But she kissed us again.  Another wonderful moment in time.  Right as I knew that it was going to happen, that perfect balance of beauty and touch made my nerves run wild.  I felt great.

It felt good for a couple of reasons.  The first is that my skills with my lips were still razor-sharp, even though I haven’t gotten to employ them in a LONG time.  That was pretty swell.  The other thing is that I have felt very much unwanted lately.  When you are a titan and not much in the looks-department, it makes it so that very few people notice you.  I have felt so unwanted lately that when a woman was asked by her kid if I was handsome, and she said yes, I felt like a new person.  That was a nice compliment, even if not directed at me.

The little moments are all I really have.  With my health never in the best place, I may not have all that much time left.  I have enough, but time is never my ally, and I am aware of that.  So, getting a soft kiss from a beautiful woman makes all the difference in the world.  Sure, now that she is gone, it has come back to me how sad it all is.  It might be a LONG time until I see her again.  Who knows – with law school and whatnot, she may never come back up here.

I choose to believe that it is all worth something.  Even if all life does is give me shit, I have to believe that all of the shit that life gives me is worth something.  It doesn’t have to be a compelling something.  Hell, it doesn’t even have to be a truly worthwhile something.  It just has to be worth something that I can see and understand.  It’s getting harder and harder to believe it.  My heart aches from both the medical and the emotional.

When Camille was around, I will say that one draw between us that probably worked against us in the long run is that we tended to fuel one-another’s depression.  She was as depressed as I was.  Our mutual hatred of life and the world made it so that mocking it was a common pasttime.  Once she was gone, I lost that.  I can’t try too hard to find it again, because I have already seen how that can push people away.

I am so tired, lately.  My job fucking sucks and hardly anybody seems to want to hang out lately.  It is getting so hard, finding reasons to keep going.  But I do keep going.  I can’t tell you why.  Maybe it is best that I don’t know.  But then there are the small moments.  Those moments where you feel like you aren’t going to just crumble into your own life and the pathetic bullshit that it is on all sides of it.  I choose to believe that those moments are worth something.  Even if it isn’t profound, it is worth something.  It has to be.  If not…then maybe there will come a point where my mind’s lack of a desire to wake up will finally convince my body that it’s the right thing to do.

Until next time, a quote,

“If I laughed at every bonehead stunt you pulled, I’d laugh myself to death!” -Baron Franz d’Epinay, Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

Peace out,

Maverick

2012-2013 Academic Year in Review

Well, we have finished packing stuff for tonight.  So, we thought that we would do our yearly post on the academic year, and our thoughts.  This isn’t going to be a review like I normally do.  No final verdict.  Just my thoughts.  I feel so tired.  Physically, mentally and emotionally, I am drained.  Up front, this has been the worst year of my academic life.  It feels like it has gone on forever.  For real, this year feels like it has been an eternity.  Part of me is so glad to see that it’s over.  Another part of me wants to cry right now.

I’ll start at the beginning.  This year didn’t start out well.  A former best friend of mine got upset with me.  As was typical with every time she was upset with me, she didn’t say anything.  She just got mad, to herself, and then it led to some ugly repercussions when it finally did reach me.  She didn’t want to see me around her work anymore.  Since I was already not in the best place, with a new job that I was not particularly enjoying due to the late hours and the long commute, along with some pain that I was in at the time, I did what I had usually done – I blogged.  Angry venting online is not anything approaching a good thing to do when one is mad with somebody.  And I didn’t hold back.  No names were mentioned, but it would take a blind hyena not to see who I was talking about.  And she did see this post.  But, again, she got mad and didn’t talk to me.  She said nothing at all.  Instead, I got the silent treatment.

The fall semester starts.  I return to campus, living in the dorms again.  I was already not in the best place, but the way I saw it, it could be worse.  I started up with a REALLY full course load.  Working the job I do, this didn’t mesh well.  A couple of classes saw grades start to hemorrhage.  I dropped them, and things evened out.  Well, evened out better.  For a while, they were even looking pretty good.  I was feeling okay.  One class was hurting, but I did manage to salvage that grade into something semi-respectable.

There was one really good thing that happened in the fall semester.  It’s about 2 in the morning and I get a text from a different girly-mate of mine.  She is at a bar down 5th and was ditched there.  Her friend and their companions disappeared and she was alone.  Scared, she reached out to me.  The girl did everything right.  She stayed in public, making sure that she was never alone anywhere.  Downtown on a Friday night, with the drunks at full-tilt, this was NOT a safe place for a girl to be alone at.  I headed out as fast as I could.  I get to where she is and she runs to us.  I felt like fucking Galahad, rescuing her from certain danger.  That was awesome.  We ended up going to McDonald’s for some fries.  Her nerves were calmed and she was better.  This girl and my’s friendship has never been stronger.

But back the former best friend.  I got a new phone and could text as much as I liked.  I hadn’t had that before.  So, I was thinking that now I would have new avenues to reach out to people and have lots of great conversations.  With some, that idea worked like a charm.  However, this friend, was strangely silent.  When we did talk, it was in the shortest and choppiest conversations I have ever had.  Like she didn’t want to talk to me any more than I wanted to talk to her.  This didn’t bode well.  I’m not blind.  Very quickly, I saw that something was wrong.  So, on Facebook, I wrote her a message, confronting this issue.  See, I was told by SOMEBODY ELSE (something that gets under my skin in ways you can’t believe) that she had a beef with me over a blog post.  Which one?  Well, I was curious, so I asked.  I got a reply that set the stage for the fallout of our friendship, and the pain that I have been suffering for this entire spring semester.  She told me that she was angry.  She didn’t say why.  She didn’t say what.  Instead, she told me that she would get back with me.  When she was not upset, because she wanted to talk rationally about this.  Okay.  Not the worst idea.  However good in theory it was, the execution couldn’t have been worse.

Right before the final in a class that I wasn’t doing too well in, I check my Facebook page that morning.  I see that I have lost a friend.  Okay.  I wasn’t too thoughtful of this, because sometimes people just moved on.  I have plenty of fair-weather friends on Facebook who I gain and lose without much notice.  It happens.  But I look in my “Close Friends” page, and see that somebody who was there before is now not.  It was her.  A person who said that they cared for me so much, and that our friendship meant the world to her.  This is four months after she told us that she would get back to us about what was bugging her.  Four months, and instead of keeping her word, she throws us away.  My response was measured.  I wrote her a message asking her what had happened.  As somebody who believed that I was in her inner circle of friends, I think I earned that.  The reply I got was almost a point-for-point replica of a problem that she had had with me two years prior.  She tells me that her boyfriend and her were having fights about me (even though the most I existed in her life was as a Facebook IM and an ever-decreasing number of text messages).

I knew that something wasn’t right.  My gut-instinct is never wrong, and it wasn’t wrong here.  So, I took a different tactic in my reply.  Made that I just wanted my Scrabble partner back, and if we could keep things impersonal, that was fine.  She replied with the truth – getting rid of me was the quickest and simplest solution to a problem she had.  And this solution was to get rid of me.  Naturally, I was pissed.  I went back at her the angriest I have been in a long time.  I made a rather fitting comparison between her and I cousin of mine who had also thrown me away for FAR less than I was worth.  He had been a best friend to me as well.  Both of them used me, liked me when I was around, but would then drop me without looking back.  She and I got into a back-and-forth bit of arguing.  She still claimed that her boyfriend and her were having fights about me.  So, I asked a simple question (that I deserved an answer to) – what were the fights about?  She told me that she didn’t know, and then told me not to ask.  She said that that just made her mad.  In hindsight, I should have pressed the attack.  At least when she was mad, she was talking.  Which is more than I could say for the rest of the time.

But, it was done.  Here’s how it broke down.  Since I won’t ever get to tell her, I guess I’ll tell you.  Because I want you all to see as clearly as I do how she fucked up this entire situation.  It started in August, with her getting mad at me.  Instead of talking to me, like a friend, and saying that she was upset, she says nothing.  Then, when this problem starts compounding on other problems (that I knew nothing about), and I hear from other people that she has a problem, she tells me to wait.  Instead of not being rational.  Instead of just getting upset and getting it out of her system, she tells us to wait.  That she will talk to us and we will figure things out.  Four months later, having said nothing to us, she then unfriends us and tells us that we have no place in her life, because her relationship with her boyfriend is threatened by us.  Man, who are we to these people?  Do I have a power that I wasn’t aware of?  She did absolutely everything wrong.  But you know what the worst thing was?  You know what the most hurtful thing was?  The most hurtful thing is that after doing all this damage, I don’t think that she would have ever, EVER talked to us again if we hadn’t have demanded an explanation.  So, she also broke her promise.  If there is an uglier way for a great friendship to die, I don’t know what it is.  And the worst part of all of this is that this could have easily been avoided if she had just treated me like a friend and talked to me.

I go home for Christmas break.  It wasn’t pleasant.  At all.  All of the Christmas spirit was literally sucked out of me.  And with there being pretty much nobody to see out in the Valley, I felt oh so very alone out there.  That whole affair, happening just a couple weeks before the holiday itself, ruined Christmas for me.  Forever.  I don’t even care about the holiday anymore.  Next year, come Christmas Eve, I am staying at home, getting some sleep.  But, as is usual whenever I am having problems – if I voice any discontent with this holiday, the mother-unit assumes that I am somehow insulting her.  Yes, I can’t have my own problems.  That would just be too much.  In her mind, if I have problems, I should just shut up.  That is much simpler.

However, there were two bright spots that made the end of break worth it.  The first was seeing an old friend again.  Her and I had spent almost no time together.  We go out to the movies and after it is done, we got to talking.  It was one of the best conversations of my life.  She was loyal to our friendship.  Even though we were very different people, she was loyal to it all the same.  That made me feel very good.

Another thing that happened was something that felt pretty good at the time, and saved that break for me.  Though it would become an issue.  I found a girl who was interested in us, sexually.  I decided to see where that would go.  She was my Dom.  I was her sub.  It was…pleasant.  Kind of.  See, it started out great.  But after a while, she was becoming more and more undependable.  She would make plans with us, only to break them without telling us.  I was quickly annoyed, and it ended about a month and a half after it started.  After it was done, I felt even more lonely than I had before, because it was another reminder of how little I am wanted.

I get back to the dorms for the spring semester.  This started on an even more sour note than the fall.  Still emotionally beaten from losing a best friend, trying to wrap our minds around it, we were not very pleased to come back.  Plus, another friend we had in Anchorage was almost totally absent from our lives.  But that is part of a long story about her and her three-way relationship with a guy and girl that I won’t get into.  Mostly because it’s none of you-all’s damn business.

Spring semester has beaten the shit out of us.  Came so very close to breaking us.  Our classes were hard as fuck, there was almost nobody to see and the gig I had going with the aforementioned Dom was hitting a dead-end.  But it gets worse.  See, there was this shrink that we were forced to go and talk to.  Part of the effort to make me and me accept that we are not mentally healthy and need all kinds of super-duper support from shrinks.  Yeah, fuck that.

But you see, this time was different.  See, this shrink decided that he would do something for which I should sue the son of a bitch – reveal something that I specifically told him was in confidence.  I signed a waver saying that his final report would be able to be viewed by the parentals.  Included in this report is a secret that I have been carrying with me for a LONG time.  So long now that it feels like an eternity.  And not only did he mention it in his report, but when he was giving the Cliff notes version of the report to one of the parentals, he made sure to bring up that secret of mine to them.  Twice.  Fucking asshole.  You have no idea how pissed I was at the time.  I wanted to beat his head against his desk until he went limp.  He made sure that the parental in question knew this secret.  That was clearly the goal.

Now, nothing in my family stays a secret for long.  Once one person knows, it is pretty much a guarantee that others will know.  So now I was put into a position that I never wanted to be in – having to either wait for this to get out on its own or to talk to the person who this secret involved.  I chose the latter.  I cannot tell you how nervous I was bringing this up.  My hands were shaking.  But since the parental knew what, but not who, I didn’t want this person finding out from somebody else.  Lord knows, I have seen very recently how well that turns out.  So, I got this person to talk to me.  And you know what, that conversation went so much better than I could have ever anticipated.  Turns out, they had figured this out a long time ago.  And this knowledge was doing harm to our friendship.  By getting it out in the open, the two of us were able to put it behind us.  I think.  We have hardly spoken since then.  I don’t regret my actions.  But I do wonder if they are cool with me.  I can’t tell you, for sure.

Classes kicking my ass, personal problems piling up and the residual pain of being betrayed and thrown away by yet-another person I held in my inner-most circle of friends.  I was breaking.  My supports were crumbling.  I lost myself inside of Mass Effect for WAY longer than I should have.  It was all I could do to not lose myself to despair.

The only truly good part of the spring semester came from the time I got to spend with a new friend of mine.  Her and I have been growing on each other.  It started out slow, as most things with me do.  I am slow to trust.  But as we got closer and closer, we found that we were kindred spirits.  Every Friday night, we had a routine of going to IHOP and eating there.  It was a nice way to finish up a week.  We also had some nerd nights and just hanging out.  It was a small comfort from what was overall kicking my ass.  I am so glad that she and I found one-another.

Now, it is all said and done.  The friend I rescued from the bar goes home tonight.  I am driving her to the airport again.  And now I kind of want to cry, because she is going to be leaving, never to return.  I may never see her again, and it is hurting me.  But I can’t say anything.  I can’t say that I don’t want them to go.  I can’t tell them that I just want them to stay.  I don’t want to hurt her.  I love her.  And so I do the noble thing.  I say nothing, to not hurt people.  Good people hurt and what is their reward?  Being the better person is fucking bullshit.

So much ugliness.  So much pain.  Given all this, you might thing that me and despair are pretty tight.  But I am not despairing.  The reason is simple – this is about as bad as it could be.  I have hit rock-bottom.  Nowhere left to go but up.  I have hope for the future.  It has to get better from here.  Sure, things are going to be hard ahead, but for the moment, it’s done.  And that is something to feel good about.

And who knows.  Maybe this summer won’t be so bad.  I do have a few people that I mean to see.  I am going to be making the most of my cooking and baking talents, since I will have a kitchen again.  It isn’t great, but this could get better.  At least, that’s what I choose to believe.

Until next time, a quote,

“Times like these, you know who your real friends are. They’re not the ones running around, looking for an escape route. They’re the ones who stand at your side through the worst of it. Who never give up on you.” -Commander Shepard, Mass Effect 3

Peace out,

Maverick

Top 10 Mass Effect Series Characters

For as much as I gush about this series, you might be curious to know which of the grade-A cast of characters were my favorite.  This game had an amazing cast.  The voice work was nothing short of incredible.  I will harbor a deep hatred for how the series ended, but every single moment leading up to that was awesome.  I will say up-front that Shepard is not going to be on this list.  Shepard was a cool character, but the reality is that Shepard was the avatar for the player, and the amount of choices it gave you made that abundantly clear.  So, with all of that said, here is my list for the very best of this game’s characters.  If you see any who are not on this list, comment as to who your favorite are, and tell me why.  Let’s keep the market of ideas open.  And just so you know, if you’ve never played the series, you are going to be REALLY lost.  Here goes…

10. Urdnot Bakara/Eve
While Wrex was a fascinating character, along with Grunt being loads of fun, the Krogan that I most enjoyed talking to was the female who was rescued from Maelon’s experiments.  Not only is she not some weak female who needs to be protected, but she represents so much of the strength that the Krogan still possess.  Not only does she not let herself be coddled like Wrex wants to, but she is emotionally and mentally strong in ways that no other Krogan is.  Not even Wrex.  Not only that, but she fills in the blanks on a lot of Krogan culture.  Turns out, once upon a time, the women of the Krogan race held the power, and she wanted to return that.  She faces down an entire room of angry males who are looking for a fight, telling them that if they keep going as they are, they will just run themselves into the ground.  That kind of strength is just awesome, and I think it is so cool.  She is a brief character to get to know, but she is on this list all the same.

9. Aria T’Loak
It wasn’t until the Omega DLC for Mass Effect 3 that this character really made an impact with me.  Voiced by Carrie Ann Moss, this is more proof that so-so actors and actresses can do amazing voice-work.  This character is an Asari.  It is hinted that she is well-over 1000 years old.  But unlike most Asari, who cool down and get all wise and stuff at that age, she instead is running the most ruthless criminal haven in the entire galaxy.  And she rules with an iron fist.  As she says, there is only one rule, “don’t fuck with Aria.”  But beneath her badass bravado, there are hints of something far more tragic underneath Aria.  In the Omega DLC, you get some interesting back-story on this character.  You see that she wasn’t always the tough bitch that she works so hard to be.  She once had a protegee.  A Turian student who could use biotics.  When this student started learning to control their abilities, both the student and Aria got very close.  While nothing is ever explicitly said, it is pretty clear that they were in love.  The Turian says that leaving Aria was the hardest thing they had ever had to do.  This character is a lot deeper than it looks at first, and she has earned her place at #9.

8. Legion
While not the name that this character has by choice, this is still one of the most interesting characters of the game for a lot of reasons.  Legion is a unit of the actual Geth forces.  Not the heretics that everyone believed were the Geth for most of series.  Legion gives some amazing insight on the Geth culture, along with a rather ugly look at history.  The mission that puts you inside the Consensus is the reason that I have absolutely NO sympathy for the Quarians and their struggle against them.  My favorite interaction with Legion is aboard the Heretic central ship.  When Shepard points out that judging a mechanical race like organics isn’t the same, so it shouldn’t be done, Legion agrees.  He says something that I think is one of the most profound things in this game – that treating every single species like your own is racist.  It’s altruistic, but still racism.  All alien races must be judged individually, and treated accordingly.  Legion was a fascinating look into a race that was very secretive, and made for a great friend who was hard to lose.

7. Jack/Subject Zero
A lot like Aria, this is a character who I like more as the layers get peeled away.  Raised in an unbelievably cruel Cerberus facility, Jack was forced to have a love of carnage from an early age.  The people there did all sorts of inhuman tests on her to make her the most powerful biotic that humanity could create.  Mission accomplished.  Unfortunately, all the power backfired on them.  Jack broke out of the facility, killing almost every single person there in the process.  Afterwards, she wandered the galaxy, doing unspeakable atrocities.  Yet, beneath the side of her that seems to almost obsess about killing, Jack has a far more vulnerable side.  She is afraid of getting hurt, trusting others and doesn’t let people get close.  But as you work with her, she begins to turn around.  In Mass Effect 3, if she survived the Suicide Mission, you see that side of her in action.  She becomes a teacher of special biotic students at Grissom Academy.  She sees these students as her family, and protects them with everything she has.  And she becomes a good friend, grudgingly acknowledging that she respected Shepard and was glad to be a part of the crew of the Normandy.  The right kind of psychotic in every way.

6. Admiral Steven Hackett
Jacob says something that sums up my thoughts about this guy, “If they make old guys any tougher than that, I’d like to see it.”  That’s about all one can say.  Hackett is the quintessential soldier.  War is his resume, and he knows that he is the best.  But like all great commanders, he is not egotistical.  He is reserved, quiet and contemplative.  He keeps his cool, even when the entire galaxy is looking to fall apart, because he knows that his men and women under his command are counting on him.  This character is a great leader, perceptive and that voice of his is just so convincing.  The moment he talks, I am certain that this man is in command.  It’s an awesome character, who never lets up even unto the very end.  He knows that there may be no hope, but he won’t rest until he has exhausted all possible options.  That is the kind of person that I want to lead me into battle.

5. The Illusive Man
Here is a character who I am going to have some disagreement with people with.  I personally don’t think that he was always evil the way he was in Mass Effect 3.  I’m with Joker in thinking that once upon a time, Cerberus existed to further humanities interests and fight the battles the regular military and the Council refused to.  Sure, their methods were extreme, but there was a greater good.  What happened with the Illusive Man was that he got too close to his enemy.  He became Indoctrinated.  But when he first started, despite his cruel methods, he did have an admirable goal.  With Martin Sheen providing the voice, this character had both charm, class and was likeable.  I may have disagreed with his methods, but we both wanted the same thing – to save the galaxy.  This character has a dark past, but I still enjoyed my time talking to him.  If only things hadn’t gone the way they did.  I figure that in a battle with the Reapers, this guy could have made for an invaluable ally.

4. Jeff “Joker” Moreau
Picking Seth Green for this voice was absolutely perfect.  He brings some of his comedic charm to this role.  Being the smart-ass pilot, Joker starts out a little bit cold.  But he warms up to Shepard and brings his unusual perspective to the game, with a nice touch of a kind of his cruel side to point out what needs to be examined.  But you do see that underneath his sarcasm, this character is profoundly motivated.  Some of the talks that you have with Joker in ME3 are among the best segments in the game.  The bit after the Fall of Thessia is my personal favorite.  Joker is not only a great pilot, but a rarely honest voice in a game where half the fun is picking through people’s bullshit.  And he is at this spot for a reason.

3. Liara T’Soni
Maybe it’s just because I pursued romantic interest with this character as much as I did, but I still think that this is one of the most developed characters in the game.  When you first meet her, she is a scared student who had never seen actual war before.  But over time, she hardens up.  She becomes a powerful information broker.  And if you were smart and did the Lair of the Shadow Broker mission, she becomes a DAMN good Shadow Broker.  By the end, she can stand among the best of them as a soldier.  Liara becomes a hell of an ally.  The only real pity in this game is that it doesn’t feel like the relationship truly evolves if you pursue her romantically.  Especially if you had been since ME1.  By the third game, her and Shepard should have been very close, maybe even living together.  With the galaxy going to shit, having someone you love close by seems like an obvious thing to do.  My favorite moment is watching her as she is losing her home, and the despair filling her.  Yet she resolves to do better.  An awesome character, and one that I always wanted.

2. Mordin Solus
A former member of the Salarian Special Tasks Group (STG), this man had a lot of emotional baggage when you first met him.  Being not only a damn good soldier, Mordin had a secret.  The Genophage, a pathogen that had destroyed Krogan culture, was modified by him, when it was discovered that it wasn’t as effective as it used to be.  He did as he was instructed, and while he holds that it was the right thing to do, you also find out that he kept with the project after it was done.  He would yearly make visits, to see how things were going.  Seeing the results of his actions, the decay of Krogan culture, it changed him.  He got out of the military life, opting to find a way to help the people who didn’t have options.  He found that on Omega.  But in ME3, he gets a chance at redemption and to get personal closure.  I loved Mordin because of his outlook on life.  Given the short lives of Salarians, many of them choose to believe that their lives are not singular.  Mordin’s talks about his own spiritual side were my favorite segment of ME2.  The fact that he is getting old and his views on making the most of what’s left of his life.  An profound character, with an interesting back-story.  Not to mention that in the Citadel DLC, you learn that not only did he do business with Aria, he had sex with her and then beat her at her own game.  That’s just awesome.

And my favorite character from the Mass Effect series is -

1. Garrus Vakarian
Garrus’ sexy voice is one of the reasons that I was always female Shepard.  The other reason was that I like Jennifer Hale’s voice work better.  But yeah, of all the characters on this list, Garrus is the one that I think went through the most change.  He starts off as a disgruntled and disillusioned member of C-Cec.  He joins up with Shepard, seeing that Shepard can get things done.  After stopping Saren and Sovereign, he becomes the leader of a mercenary gang on Omega, dealing with criminals in a more direct fashion.  You see his violent side, but also the side of him that wishes to do good.  Then, in the third game, you see Garrus pushed to his limits, trying to hold it together while not only the galaxy goes to shit, but so does his home.  Garrus is a soldier.  Nothing keeps him down.  He will fight until there is absolutely nothing left of him, and then keep going.  The strongest member of your crew, by far, he makes for an awesome ally and I chose to believe an amazing lover.  Oh yeah, he is sexy as hell.  I could do horribly naughty things to that voice of his.  But I digress.  Strong, sure, savvy, funny and never backing down from a fight, he is my favorite character in this amazing series.

So, who are your favorites?  Comment and tell me why.  Keep the discussion going.  It’s an open forum of ideas.

Until next time, a quote,

“I tend to expect the worst anyway, so dreaming about it seems like a waste of good sleep.”  -Garrus Vakarian

Peace out,

Maverick

Self-Indulgent and Overstated Nerdrage: Always-Online DRM

I was watching random videos, passing the time, when I came across one on one of my favorite gaming websites – Gametrailers.  Their reviews are some of the best I have seen, and I often agree with them.  However, I came across the latest episode of their show “Bonus Round.”  In it, we have Geoff Keighley, who has already proven himself to be nothing but a corporate shill.  The video of him in front of a thing of Doritos and Mountain Dew, with a totally blank stare, talking about the gaming media industry perfectly capsulized the view that people have of this guy, and always will.  For real, Keighley, you are never coming back from that.  You are a corporate shill, and always will be.

With him, he had a panel of three other people.  The first was David Jaffee.  He was the creator of the God of War series and is still a game designer.  Then there was Michael McWhertor, who is a gaming journalist for Polygon.com.  The final member was some guy named Jeff Cannata from a group called Newest Latest Best.

The first big panel question was – what’s the deal with the controversy behind always-online DRM?  And what I got to see what three guys who literally just did not get it and were quick to defend the corporations.  For real, only one guy got why people have a problem with this.  One panel member got pretty close to what people’s problem with this is.

The first major problem is that not everybody has internet.  I don’t know if Keighley and Jaffee (the two most outspoken critics of the critics) know this, but America is getting this HUGE divide between the lower and upper class.  There used to be this cozy place called the middle class, but that has now divided into the middle-upper and middle-lower classes, and the divide is growing every single day.  Money isn’t just raining out of the sky for us.  So there are a lot of gamers who have their systems never hooked up to the internet.  Myself among them.

The next big problem is that it isn’t just the internet connection itself.  Most internet plans in this country come with a data usage limit.  It’s one of the many reasons why America has the worst internet of the developed world.  We can thank the corporate overlords that this group of panelists are clearly shills for for that.  And guess what can just eat through a person’s data usage?  Online gaming.  If an internet connection is needed to play, then you bet your ass that there is a data transfers, which eats up data usage.  And the fees that one gets when one goes over their data limits are hardcore steep.

In the video, however, you hear these talking heads not only not getting why people may have a problem with this, but also mocking the complaints that gamers have with this issue.  Which, by the way, are very legitimate complaints.  Basically doing nothing but calling the people who buy these products whiny brats.  Yeah, that’s a great way to expand your customer base.

This sort of thing is yet-another reason why I am starting to think that the gaming companies don’t give a shit about their consumers.  And that is NOT a good way to play this.  For real, let’s look at the evidence.  The new SimCity releases, and when the always-online DRM leads to server problems, the game goes dark for the majority of players.  They can’t even play single player.  Previously, Blizzard has the exact same problem with Diablo III.  But whereas Blizzard quickly worked on patches for this problem, EA doubled-down.  They basically just told the consumers to shut up and go away.  This trend of always-online DRM has never once done any good.

More evidence of the lack of respect for their customers was with the handling of the Mass Effect 3 debacle.  EA held firm right until the point where consumer rage reached critical-mass.  Disney decided to close up Lucasarts after buying the Star Wars license.  When consumer backlash went critical mass, there was almost nothing heard from Disney.  Square Enix has shown nothing but contempt for their consumers, pandering to the fans of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts to keep the capital still flowing in.  And how well is that working out?  Then Capcom had the brilliant idea to decide to make a bad joke in the new Devil May Cry which was mocking the previous games.  I’m not insulting the new DmC.  I love that game.  Ninja Theory did a damn good job.  But giving the finger to the fan base when you make a new game is NOT how you keep consumer loyalty.

The gaming companies need to stop abusing the loyalty of their customers.  This kind of thing needs to stop.  In an age when consumer backlash is so easily amalgamated, gaming companies need to stop spitting in the face of their consumers.  You can only insult the people who are being asked to buy your products so much before it comes back to bite you right in the ass.  It’s happening already.

The crowds who want a new Final Fantasy games are becoming nil in the US.  In Japan, there is still a lot of loyalty, but that market alone won’t save them, and they know it.  I could go on all day about how Capcom has fucked up and how people don’t like seeing their name on new games.  EA has been labeled the worst company in the US (a designation that is hyperbole, by the way) because of their business practices.

But the reason that this issue is as controversial as it is is because of the fact that it shows just how detached the corporate side of gaming is with the consumers and how little they care.  When the consumers point out the mistakes, they simply brush us off or worse, insult us.  This is a major issue, and the fact that people like Jaffee or Keighley just want to brush us off and tell us to just shut up is beyond insulting.  This is how you lose customer loyalty.

And for the major gaming companies, I want you to think LONG and HARD about this.  Because the Indie market is growing every day.  New and better ways are being made to reach consumers.  What side of this do you REALLY want to be on?

Until next time, a quote,

“We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” -G.K. Chesterton

Peace out,

Maverick