Archive for the ‘Pax Ganelonia’ Category
April 22nd, 2010 | 
Author: I remember living in the local arcades, those murky neon dungeons where digital battles were waged against tanks, aliens and little blue ghosts. I was hooked and the quarters flowed from my pockets to enrich the hygene challenged owners of these Dark Dens of early computer gaming.
As I got older, I discovered the pleasures of REAL computer gaming…. first in text or ANSI graphics… then with ever smaller and more colorful blocks of pixels. Good stuff… good times.
I was there for the rise of the Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game(MMORPG), playing hours of Ultima Online (Atlantic forever!), Everquest, Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Lord of the Rings Online, Champions Online and finally… Star Trek Online. Over the last 10-12 years, I have been there and done that for both online and single player games.
And consoles! Yep… I had all the stars from the home TV gaming world, from the original pong to the Wii… ending with the Playstation 3. Cartridges and disks… I have played them all.
And now? I’m done. I think after all these years, I’ve gotten just about all I can out of these experiences.
What started this decline was my house was robbed a couple of years ago. My PS3 was stolen, along with all the games. As I was totaling the value of these for insurance purposes, I actually saw the accumulated bottom line number and was shocked that I had wasted so much money on this hobby. I decided right then to not replace the console and use that money for other more “home improvement” things.
Since then, I’ve picked up a few games, but none of them have really entertained me beyond the first few days. After the initial “cool” factor… they all became more like work than play… and as my play time is limited, I tended to look for other quick bits of distraction.
The final nail in the coffin for my Gaming Identity was a quote by Edward “Bill Adama” James Olmos, who commented about how we are a reflection of what we choose to do… if we read histories, we are historians… if we work on our houses, we are carpenters/electrician/plumbers etc… gardeners… and he left that if we play games in front of a TV for hours…well, we are THAT. Wow.
At this stage of my life, with the commitments to family and career and house… I cannot see devoting my time to so unproductive a hobby. And that really is the point, isn’t it? Hobbies are great. Every man needs a hobby. But, as far as hobbies go… I would consider computer gaming to be the least productive outside the event of entertainment itself.
As I get older, and I start to look at time as a more limited commodity, I cannot help but feel that even my entertainment time needs to be productive in some way… be it the creation of something useful or pleasing to the eye… or making my home a more fit place to dwell in… or activities to improve my mind and body.
What really seals the deal … suppose if, like the property value stolen… I could somehow reclaim the time spent on 10 years gaming to then spend on either the equivalent reimbursement of previous entertainment…or something else, like lessons or carpentry or some there more productive hobby… what would I do? There really is not question, for me…
I wouldn’t be gaming.
I’m thinking the parents are all “WTF are my kids singing about!?”
Charles Krauthammer’s take on the Obama administrations handling of our national security is spot on.
IMO, it is not even defensible by the left that Barry’s entire Ivory Tower view is anything other than a fraud and suicidal. The academia mind-set of world affairs is WRONG. It ignores first principles…which is not harmony and social “progress”. It is national defense which allows all the virtues of an enlightened society. That “enlightenment” doesn’t create the foreign policies. It is teh security of a strong foreign policy that allows the luxury of academic fancies.
This is all quite mad even in Obama’s terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.
The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.
The president said that this incident highlights “the nature of those who threaten our homeland.” But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as “extremist(s).”
A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and are openly pledged to war on America.
The Dallas Morning News has a great article about how the video game industry has filled the void Hollywood has left on entertainment which extolls the virtues of the American Military.
Hollywood churned out dozens of in-the-trenches, pro-America extravaganzas such as Wake Island and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo while World War II was being fought.
But the portrayal of the U.S. military during its current engagements has been more subdued and even critical.
Game makers have stepped into the breach. And they’re making huge bucks crafting patriotic entertainment pieces for which the movie industry used to be famous.
Most notable of the new virtual epics is Modern Warfare 2 and its predecessor, both from California-based publisher Activision Blizzard Inc.
Activision’s top executive made it clear where the company stands when he announced an endowment to help military veterans find jobs.
“Business leaders have an opportunity to … reverse an alarming trend of not recognizing the sacrifices made by the men and women of our military service,” CEO Robert Kotick said.
Years ago, back before White Wolf released the Vampire the Masquerade to legions of Proto-Emos and Anne Rice wrung every homoerotic fantasy out of her twisted little brain, vampires were monsters. They were The Bad Things to Avoid and were clearly a thing you did not want to become. They were demonic metaphors for Satan… a liar who bewitches to spread his own damnation. And his minions ate bugs! How grody is that?
Ah… the good old days.
"I want my two dollars!"
The days when creepy dead kids would float outside your window, whispering to you to open it and invite them in.
Back then, you were pretty damn sure that seriously f*cked up sh*t would go down if you opened that window. Hell, I had nightmares about that evil kid, and every scratch sound from my window kept me up at night. In those day vamps were things to be terrified of. They would murder you… and becoming one meant the REAL you… your mind and soul… would be destroyed and replaced by an evil spirit that would likely kill everyone you loved. Your mom, your wife… your kids.(even babies)
Tags: Jonah Goldberg has a great post over at National Review Online about the Climate email scandal. Clock on over to read the whole thing, but here are a few salient points:
In a long string of embarrassing e-mail exchanges, CRU scientists discuss with friendly outside colleagues, including Penn State University’s Michael Mann, how to manipulate the data they want to show the world, and how to hide the often-flawed data they don’t. In one exchange, they discuss the “trick” of how to “hide the decline” in global temperatures since the 1960s. Again and again, the researchers don’t object to just inconvenient truths but also inconvenient truth-tellers. They contemplate and orchestrate efforts to purge scientists and journals who won’t sing from the same global-warming hymnal.
In one instance, Phil Jones, the CRU director, says a scientific journal must “rid (itself) of this troublesome editor,” who happened to publish a problematic paper. In another, Jones says we “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
These documents reveal the trick behind how they hide the dissent. Climate-change activists often dismiss critics by noting that the skeptics haven’t offered their arguments in peer-reviewed literature. Hence why they work so hard to keep dissenters out of the literature! Indeed, whatever the final verdict on the CRU’s shenanigans, two things are already firmly established by even a sympathetic reading of these documents.
And when you loss the Daily Show…
Happy Thanksgiving!
It’s been a long time since I gave this subject any thought, but as part of my scholarly journey into objective comparative theology, I spent a good deal of time studying cultural metaphysics and the occult as viewed from various religious traditions.
I believe think a conclusion that there are events and energies behind what we call “haunting” and/or “possession” is a fair intellectual pursuit… as are the nature of these events and energies open for equally fair debate.
In then end, as a more rational thinker… I cannot commit to any of these suppositions as part of my world view. Regardless of that fact, Demonology is a tantalizing and even entertaining line of study for a genre geek like me, so I put together a reflection on the research I did.
Supernatural events are reported to follow a system of progression. In the following post, I will highlight the 5 stages of Demonic or Spiritual Influence.
In this video, we see a National Geographic photographer meeting face to face with a huge Leopard seal.
