Agents of Trolling

So far, Agents of SHIELD has been a boon to the worst kind of geek/nerd - the geek/nerd who thinks that they are there to call nerds nerds and that makes them some sort of alpha badass nerd. I've had a hard time finding a review of Agents that was both negative and didn't devolve into someone furiously trying to smugly troll Joss Whedon fans. "Oh no, your little nerd god has messed up, you sad sweaty little nerds!" is pretty much the tone of every commentary about that show that wasn't favorable. I guess folks love an underdog for only so long - they have to hate that same underdog once he's an actual success. Gotta keep that cred!

It's too bad, though, that Agents of SHIELD is really, really not great. It's not bad, by the standard of typical prime time network television, it's just... bland. Nearly no television show has ever hit the ground running, though, and we're only three episodes into it, so there's room for consideration still. Look at the first season of Buffy, for Christ's sake. It was objectively terrible at start and moved into "decently engaging" territory by the end of that season. Firefly, by another comparison, was one of the rare ones that do start strong, but it's fair to remember that you can't do that every time, no matter how good you are.

So I'm skeptical but I'm not personally willing to call time of death on it or anything. It doesn't have the problems hardwired in like Dollhouse had - a shoddy premise held up by bland characters all around - but there are definitely some similarities.

The characters, save a rare few, are just... well, they're walking piles of tropes. You have Perky Tech Girl, Unremarkable Loner Agent Guy, Hardened Veteran With Painful Past, and on and on and on. They're all just seriously a jumble of characters who come off like someone just took a list of traits and assigned them to different stereotypes rather than actually trying to build characters. By episode three, if you want to keep a clipboard of this, we've pretty much checked off Obligatory Dark Time In Backstory from nearly all of them except the Excitable Nerd Puppy Twins. I'm sure, since their's wasn't shoved in our face immediately, that it'll somehow be the absolute worst. Like, "Oh we're so perky and wonderful to cover up the fact we were molested by ten-faced alien demons" or something.

And the pilot. She has a PAINFUL BACKSTORY!!!! that, like Shepherd Book, gets communicated to us in the most obtrusive, graceless "subtle" ways ever. And if you missed her BACKSTORY!!!! don't worry, someone will make some forced reference to it in a few minutes. It's not even like the BACKSTORY!!!! is even that mysterious - it's pretty obvious given the clues dropped so far. It's almost the same as if Coulson held up Wile E. Coyote type placards every five seconds that pointed to her and said "BACKSTORY EXISTS, AND SINCE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS, YOU ARE INTERESTED!"

Coulson gets by, mostly due to the actor's ability to turn over-use of deadpans and oneliners into something that doesn't wear as quickly as it should. And, to be fair to the whole show, it's hard to say if it's the actors who are unable to really convey convincing characters, or if the writing and direction is just that phoned in. By the end of the third episode, the guest bad guy (who will hopefully be recurring) immediately captures the smarm and witty line delivery Whedon shows tend to rely on, though... so it's probably the actors. Who's to say if that's Whedon's fault or network interference or whatever, but they just seem like they were picked for their ability to read lines while looking young and hip in whatever soulless costumes the show put them in. Even down to the wardrobe, nothing about these folks feels vaguely human or real, just purely manufactured.

Agents, so far, is just pretty much what would have happened if Firefly was handed to someone in marketing to have everything adjusted for the network. The parallels between the two shows are numerous and, unfortunately, not exaggerated. People see the plane and start making the jokes, but it doesn't take long for you to realize you can line the two up without having to make very difficult or forced comparisons.

But, I am optimistic. Not, as some sad little people would like to believe, because I am some breathless sweaty Joss fan-nerd. Just because the show does have promise, and even Daniel Radcliffe was godawful when that whole Potter thing started. Granted, he was like 10 or something, but hey you never know. If I had given up on Fringe in the first three episodes (and I thought about it, honestly), I'd have missed out. And the quality of the show has definitely ticked upward since the... life raft. So, here's hoping.

Adjectives on the Typewriter

The funny thing about the whole Penny Arcade / PAX / Dickwolves / What The Fuck Happened deal is that it's great seeing exactly what people are taking away from it all. And by "it all", by the way, I mean "whatever part of the ongoing story they wish to focus on and ignore the rest." The sad reality of the situation is that far too many people are trying to minimize things so that they can.

Before I get too far into this, let me give people the obligatory link for those who have not followed this so closely. PS, if you think "This is about that WoW comic forever ago, right?", then you qualify as someone who has not followed this pretty much at all. Anyway, here's this -

http://debacle.tumblr.com/post/3041940865/the-pratfall-of-penny-arcade-a-timeline

It links to a timeline of events and is attempting "neutrality", but when you've named your article in this manner, you sort've lose that out of the gate. That being said, it's pretty thorough. As a matter of fact, it's down to minutiae so thin that I actually appear indirectly twice on that list. Once for participation in the Gamers With Jobs forum thread referenced - and it's not even the longest or most detailed thread there regarding this particular deal. Once again because I (years ago) established the group called Dickwolves of Austin on Facebox. More on that in a minute.

I've been told no good story starts with the phrase "what happened was..." So, what happened was Penny Arcade ran that comic we're all familiar with and there was some backlash. Some of the backlash was reasonable and measured. Some of it was just hollering stupidity generally reserved for the Internet's Anger Bandwagon once the band on said wagon begins playing a screed at someone. At the time, my takeaway was pretty much this - yes, rape culture is a thing. No, this comic is not the goddamned Devil. Yes, it is worth noting that this comic is probably a low-level part of the problem. No, it seemed like few people were actually saying that.

Everyone rushes to have their goddamned teaching moments, which usually break down thusly: "You are ignorant, and I am trying to enlighten you, slob.... why are you angry at me, cave man? Oh, it must be my massive intellect and empathy that you cannot fathom. Feh!" Naturally, there was a lot of this. Frankly, on both sides: We had the people trying to enlighten Mike and Jerry while looking down their nose at them, and we then had the counter-enlighteners attempt to roll their eyes and explain why their relaxed, not-so-wound-up-PC-bullshit viewpoint was truly what the world needed.

For my part, I thought it was funny. So I went on Facebox and used the name for a social group for some gaming locals to coordinate this, that, and the other. It was a gaming joke, we needed a team name, and not too shortly after, the T-Shirts started rolling out. It seemed to fit, and to me, it was a reminder of what happens when people just start taking their shit way too seriously.

Of course, what rolled out with (and before) this was Mike going out into the Internet and explaining to everyone how he wasn't a bad guy and that they were overreacting. And by that, I mean he was visiting blogs and firing off Tweets just directly attempting to troll the fuck out of anyone who might notice them. There's a problem that crept into the discourse that I didn't notice until later - this was, in its own way, an interesting example of something people don't understand about rape or rape culture: power is discounted by the powerful. Mike, feeling cornered and bullied, lashed out while he (intentionally at points, but not at others) rallied others to his cause. I mean, there's endless hordes of people who get told their "hilarious" joke about women or black people or gays should probably be not said. Among those people, there are many who feel like they're being cornered and bullied by PC culture, just as Mike did.

Mike, by the way, has millions of fans. Those people who felt bullied share the views of a vast majority. Mike, in this equation, was able to say a few things and summon a ravening horde of people to tell the complainers to shut up. Their views were not welcome. And so on. Summon Dire Dickwolf VI, I suppose, opting for the ability to get a bunch rather than just one.

So this is how things started - the first few steps. The problem that emerged immediately is that those who made this about the comic missed an important step. It wasn't about the comic, not really. It was about the problem such brazen jokes about rape contributes to. It was also about picking your battles - people constantly decried "this was just a run of the mill comic, they make jokes like this all the time." Well, if this was so run of the mill, why did the PA folks decide to pick this particular battle? At this point they were the ones who made it an exception when they made a follow up comic belittling and straw-manning the complaints and releasing the shirt about it, rather than just shrugging off the criticism they deal with on an ongoing basis.

So, lesson 1 here is pick your goddamned battles.

Lesson 2 is a matter of reality checking certain things. As this went on and then morphed into Mike going on to make fun of transgender people (and then, once again, attacking those who felt insulted and mocked), there was another ongoing narrative evolving. Set beside the boring, beaten-to-death mantra of "Oh, just loosen up! You're so PC! /eyeroll" was emerging the defense that Mike and Jerry were just regular guys so why did anything they say have any impact, anyway?

Guess what, folks. You can make an online comic about your self created avatars. You can put your names out there as game reviewers many people wish to hear from. You can create an online community and then a real live one (PAX!, which I attended the first one) where you are treated like celebrities. You can then create a web series that is pretty much you all the time, and then several more where it's you dealing with other people.

But, after all that, you cannot try to giggle and duck your head and try to pretend you're just "some guys" no one should listen to. Or rather, I suppose you can. But then you're just being intellectually dishonest. Or, at best, you're being kinda dumb. In neither case are you correct.

It was about this time where I became certain I didn't really back the right horse, here. Mike was obviously just going on a bro-ass rampage, and Jerry was being pretty silent. At this point I wondered what was going on in Jerry's head, and I wondered about Robert Khoo, their business director. Were these guys just causing him nightmares left and right?

We got our answer recently, when the third hit in this Triforce of Children's Behavior finally made itself known. In this year's PAX, Robert got on stage with Jerry and Mike to host one of the best attended events in the con - just the three of them chatting about PA and stuff. You know, no idea why people think those two have anything interesting to say or why Jerry or Mike might think people want to hear from them. Anyway. Robert asks if there's anything they regret, and taking the look of a young, downtrodden hero underdog in the novel of his life, Mike says they should have never stopped the Dickwolves shirts.

I am not a sorcerer, but I feel like I get what he meant. We should have never let them bully us and push us around. And I'm going to say this in a way that evokes a man quietly and nobly standing up for unpopular ideals!

This, of course, resonated with the crowd, which went wild. YOU TELL 'EM, STEVEDAVE, on an epic scale. Poor Mike, a man with a small media empire and adulation of hundreds of thousands, allowed someone to make a sound business and moral decision for him - a decision that he, at the time, said he was behind and he was totally learning from his mistakes about. He couldn't leave well enough alone. He had to be right.

And that's the problem with how we discuss matters like this. People don't want to learn. People don't want to show empathy or understand. They want to be right. They want it to be a fight, and they want to be on the team that's the badasses! So, instead of trying to look at the actual problem and filter out the noise, we have people who embrace the noise. They HAVE to have the noise, because they can fight that noise. Who cares that people made articulate, reasonable comments about the situation. Fuck that! Let's focus on the slobbering idiots that everyone knows are slobbering idiots. Can we focus on those, please? I just want to address the idiots, now, so that I have an easy target and we can pretend there are only idiots. Great.

Thankfully, someone offered up this piece to encapsulate the whole thing -

http://webegeekspc.com/editorial-people-ethical-treatment-dickwolves/

This is perfect. It's self-righteousness wrapped up in the "I don't care if what I say is mean, it's true!" smugness. It's blended with a large dose of false equivocation because, well... this man takes some assumptions about what people are saying vs what they really think and then goes from there. It's one thing to guess, but the whole premise of this is, "I can see into your mind, checkmate."

Folks like this are part of the problem. They want the fight, because to them any backlash is simply justification.

Of course, the "other side is just as bad!" Naturally. There were rape and death threats towards the PA guys and their family. Unequivocally bad. But the problem with the "everyone's wrong, in their own way" bullshit is that such statements are just shortcuts for making the issue no longer about the problem. It's not the problem we're talking about now, it's trying to pretend there's not really a problem and oh hey aren't I just so emotionally balanced and enlightened? But, sure, both "sides" have done something wrong.

Who the flying fuck cares about that? This is not a team sport, people. What's important is that people need to understand what the actual problem is. Can we discuss that? No? Fine... I mean, sure. We can't talk about the problem. Because there is a problem, and this whole arc really explains it very well. "Shut up about rape. We don't wanna hear it. You don't really have a problem, you're just making it up in your head. It's not all that bad. Oh god, not this PC bullcrap again. Sure rape happens, but this isn't the way or place to talk about it. What is the way or place to talk about it? I dunno, but let me be clear - I get to decide, not you."

And that is pretty much it. That's the crux of the "Pro-Dickwolf" thing, which - by the way - is not actually a thing. Pro-Dickwolf means nothing. This isn't about a comic, sorry! Not anymore. If it were still about a comic, this would probably be pretty silly, so I can see why people are desperately clinging to that notion. But this turned into a couple of guys using their voice and power to purport that people with much smaller voices and much less power were bullying them. If you can grasp that, then you grasp the real problem as a wider issue. Someone complains, and the tables are turned on the complainer rather than the person who has caused offense or damage.

I don't personally care if people want to boycott PAX or not. I already own a Dickwolf shirt, so I guess the "damage" in that regard is done. I'm not going to burn it or anything, because it's a reminder, still, of what happens when people take their shit and themselves way too seriously. However, really, it's not the same people that reminder started off with. Instead of learning something, everyone instead saw "WE ARE BEING ATTACKED. QUICK, FORM A GROUP TO FEEL LIKE IT'S A WAR FOR SOCIAL VALUES OR SOMETHING" rather than just skimming over the information and trying to learn something.

While the cries for boycotts and righteous screams for these guys' heads irritate me to no end, I find it less offensive than the people who try to pretend that they're some last ragged band of downtrodden heroes fighting against the PC Police or something. Mike and Jerry are the ones with power, here, and they have abused it in a fantastic fashion, over the course of this whole event. We get very wrapped up in trying to be contrarian (another shortcut for trying to look smart) when people claim injury or offense, and in that rush we forget that someone started it. PA was wrong to begin with, because while perhaps you can argue the comic was harmless, so was the response. Who did it hurt for people to say, "I think Penny Arcade promotes rape culture" when the people saying it were talking to themselves and had blogs with audiences numbering in the maybe-hundreds. Who did it hurt? Then who did it hurt when Mike went out of his way to mock and belittle those people on that and many later occasions. When PA as a group followed up with the comic that equated comments about rape culture to stating "You are making rapists!", a straw man so ludicrous that I'm shocked someone like Jerry let it go. They literally became the thing people were accusing them of at that point. And that's really all there is to it.

I mean, what I'm saying here is that I need a new name for my Facebox group.

But the steeled eye, the tight jaw, say it all.
The white paint, the plastic saints, say it all.
Somebody has got to say it all. 

Dear Internet

Zack Snyder: Oh, hey, DC. It's been a long time. I've guess you've been... busy with... Christian Bale. I've been busy, too. I've been thinking about comic book movies, and the Batman IP, and I'm happy for you. I really am. Christian's a great guy. I mean, he's got a great jawline. I found someone with a good jawline, too. I don't know if you've heard, but... I'm casting Ben Affleck.

 Ben Affleck: He's casting Ben Affleck.

Zack Snyder: While Christian's trilogy ended like shit? I'm casting Ben Affleck.

Ben Affleck: He said he's casting Ben Affleck. Hey, Christian, I've been in bigger hits.

Zack Snyder: You're not using that accent, though, right?

Ben Affleck: ... no...

Harley Quinn: Excuse me... is someone here... casting Ben Affleck?

Zack Snyder: I am! I'm casting him.

Harley Quinn: Great, doll. Sign here!

Zack Snyder: Thank you. (reading cake) "Screw Snyder, I Like Your Accent."

Ben Affleck: Aww.

Zack & Ben: When I made this choice, I had this feeling inside.
It's like a million angry nerds went home and died.
I love the Chicklets you call teeth, I see money in your eyes!
When I'm casting you, Ben Affleck, I feel like I don't have to try.
And this casting won't be stopped no matter how hard they cry.

Ben Affleck: They can't stop it.

Zack Snyder: They can't stop it!

I Don't Think We Understand the Word "Victim"

So the whole deal with Microsoft, Killer Instinct, and E3 happened a week ago. A week in Internet time may as well been ten years prior, but I've been collecting my thoughts about this a little and I am a slow, slow person. I think it's worth taking a moment to see the fallout of something like this, not just to look at what Microsoft does in response (spoiler: it was not good), but also what people around me tend to think or how they act.

For those of you not wholly familiar: last week at the E3 conference, Microsoft trotted out some games and peripherals to dazzle convention attendees with. Among them was a new Killer Instinct title - a new edition of a fighting game largely known for crappy model interaction, inconsistent control, and exceptionally dull theme/flavor. It's like the love child of Mortal Kombat and Shaq Fu. People liked it a bit, though, because, well... c-c-c-c-ombo breaker? I really don't know, honestly. I think the first flag on the play here is that someone, somewhere in Microsoft's vast machine thought, "You know what people want? Killer Instinct!" and then someone else said, "Yes. I approve," and no one said as well, "I am so glad it's still the 90s!" Because if that last part was true, I'd understand.

Anyway, I digress. If you want to see the video again (or for the first time) here you go.

So, what's interesting here is really split into two things. You have the comment at about 0:37 that is the heart of the issue in this particular exhibition. But what I think is a little more telling is how the whole thing was framed, casual misogyny aside: the producer comes out well dressed and full of swagger and bravado to come beat up the frumpy Community Manager nerd. So let's break this down a little bit. 

There's been a lot said in the past few years about what being a "real geek" is. It has, predictably, been thrown in the faces of women, primarily - the typical "fake nerd" assertion is leveled against an attractive woman who dares to look attractive in some fashion (and/or is cosplaying in some costume). She's told, repeatedly, that she's only in it for the easy male attention. It's usually not couched in terms as civil as that, though - it's usually "attention whore" and "dressing like a slut" and so on. There seems to be a great, impenetrable mass within the gaming community that simply looks at a woman in the territory and thinks she has to be an outsider by default. E3 reporters who are female shared a great many stories about how they were treated there. 

On top of that, too, we have a general disdain for the "bro gamer". The typical guy we imagine on the other end of the CoD or Battlefield map - some guy in his khakis, a sideways visor, various necklaces or bracelets found in whatever same place Johnny Depp seems to get the damn things, chugging Mountain Dew and talking about how things are "sick, brah. Sick." Driving through a map of GT4, they may inquire: Bro, do you even shift? They're not real gamers either. 

But, hilariously, which one are we far, far less likely to harass in person? At E3 or any similar convention? The women. We immediately assume they don't belong, having to pass any number of tests before we let it go (if we do at all), and the sad reality is that a great many folks would rather be the bro gamer. Especially in the fighting game communities (or generally any competitive community where there are "stars"), the people we see time and again tend to be cut from the same cloth over and over - the bro gamer shadow, effectively. They want to be like our friend the KI producer - sauntering on to stage, flipping out super badass one liners over and over, and totally sticking it to those nerds. This is not to say those groups are populated with 100% people like that - for every popped collar match, you see one fight between two dudes just sitting in a hotel chair just playing the game in a tournament fight, not acting like this. 

So there's part of the problem. We tend to think we're badass when we're scorning other people or acting like the Alpha in the room - this isn't something unique to or inflated by gaming. The gaming community just seems to have an easier time finding outlets where this is accepted. 

Coming back to the KI thing, I was not really surprised by the response people had to the comments, trying to dismiss the problem was there at all. It ranged from the predictably vulgar, like this comment from the video above - "So wait...the fucking Feminazi's overreacted over THIS? Good lord...those goddamn sexist manhaters need to stop complaining about everything."

... to the strangely accepting line of - "That's just playful banter and is how the FGC is, it's not 'sexist' or derogatory, and shouldn't be taken seriously at all."

That's the middle part of the same comment, btw. That guy was just shotgunning whatever reasons he could come up with to dismiss the idea something was wrong. 

Because it was E3, the situation was also a little touchy, because several people noted that the whole thing was probably scripted. The CM got beat down pretty hard to begin with, but won the second match after she noted in the first one it was unfair the Producer had a fighting stick. Product placement to the extreme, plus the somewhat wooden, rhythmic way this dialogue was delivered makes it seem like this is likely. But that's not really a good thing, because (combined with the viewpoints above), there's only two logical scenarios, here: 

1) Microsoft scripted that whole exchange, and is woefully ignorant of the message they sent. Trash talking is one thing, but "Just let it happen, it'll be over soon," is something else entirely. Look, I'll be blunt: I make horrific and tasteless jokes from time to time. But when I do so, it's in a context where I know the people I'm speaking to will understand these are only jokes. I don't do this and shake my fist at the damn oversensitive PC police or whatever. It's because I'm a fucking adult and realize that not everyone finds the same things funny, and in a similar vein to that - not everyone has had the same life experiences and thus might find different things offensive. I can accept that if I had said that in an open group full of people I don't know, someone might have said, "Dude, not cool," and I would have rolled with it. Apologized, even. It's not for me to say if I you do or do not have the right to be offended, because I don't know you. But, of course, that's not what happened. 

2) If not scripted, then the other conclusion is that our friendly Producer felt empowered to make an off the cuff comment like that in front of thousands of people. Not because he is a horrible, rape-loving human being, but because he figured it's fine, comments like this get tossed out all the time. Look, I know we're getting a little fatigued of the phrase "rape culture", but if there's a moment that helps define it, here it is - when someone makes a joke that is unequivocally about rape*, and someone else says, "rape isn't funny," suddenly we have the person who made the joke trying to play the victim. Do we understand what the word "victim" means? You are not the victim if you said something callous - and the whole point of comments like these are to shit-talk your opponent - and someone gets upset. This is what rape culture is: the slow, steady propagation over time that comments like this need to be let go because stating your problem is "whining". Taking voices away from people who have a problem. That's the crux of it. 

Now, of course, the ad absurdum argument here is, "Well, sure. I guess all the feminazis want to convince us that since he said that, everyone will think rape is ok!" Which, of course, once this particular straw man is established, ends rational discussion. The point is not just "rape is ok", it's belittling the feelings and worries of people who don't think like you. While talk like this doesn't lead to good people suddenly becoming an one-man pack of raping Mongols, it does teach women (or those who care about this issue at all) to keep their mouths shut or endure mocking and scorn. Where does that lead? Down a slow, but inevitable decline to the conclusion that it is their fault. That no one wants to hear it. That if they weren't so whiny, things would be fine. Which, of course, leads to people tolerating being the victim more and more by degrees. 

The hilarious part is that you'll have people on one hand yell, "Oh god just stop whining!" and then out of the other, "If you women would stick up for yourselves, you wouldn't be such victims!" And they don't understand what this means to women, they're just trying to stand up for their perceived right to say or do whatever they want without being asked to adjust their behavior for the audience. And that's the critical failure - it's not about what's happening to you. It's about what's happening to them. 

(*ps: This comment was unequivocally a rape joke. It was a joke about being raped, though not literally. You cannot be a reasonable human being and say otherwise, sorry.)

They Want Cash And Credit

So I'm going to bitch a little bit here, from a place of extreme privilege. Before I do that, I'll just say that I am both aware of and agree with Louis CK's rant a little while ago (the Russian is free, you're welcome) about how people like to complain about shit that is, in the end, still a damned miracle. So I get it, what I'm about to talk about crosses into that some, but I think from a rightfully irritated place.

I got a Galaxy S4 yesterday, and it is objectively an amazing piece of technology. It is much lighter and thinner than my previous smartphones (though a bit taller and wider, lacking a keyboard), and I was really sad to give up the physical keyboard. But progress marches ever forward, and at least I can still buy cars with manual transmission, so I will take my victories where I can find them. The S4 is an extremely anticipated phone (I'd say "was", but I'm certain everyone who is anticipating it has not yet gotten it) due to the amount of processing and entertainment power packed into the little sumbitch. It is, effectively, a small tablet at this point. The screen dominates the front in a way few other phones ever have been so dominated - most phones obviously surrender most of their frontal real estate to the screen, but this thing leaves room for very, very little else like borders or physical frontal buttons.

Honestly, I don't even use these things as a phone much anymore. I think I burned something to the tune of 60 talk minutes last month, and that was about average. I have an office phone for most of my work needs, and none of my friends seem willing to vocalize into their little Facebook/Camera/Text machine. I think my experience is not that unique, either - boards and communities are littered with posts about people focusing on the networking and accessory use of these phones. What does the car dock do? How easy is it to connect to Bluetooth machines? How much battery does the 4G radio burn? How crisp is the screen resolution? How quickly can it fire up and play games? And so on. Despite cell phone call audio quality not noticeably improving for the last five years, no one seems to really care.

So when a phone that people were getting all panty-soaked over fails in a few interesting ways along these lines, I wonder wtf is up. Rightly so, I think. I had a Droid 4, and a Droid before that. Before that, a Blackberry (one of the ones older than the Droid, I don't recall the model number). The Blackberry was my first real smartphone. So there's a little history for you to frame these things. What I felt was really neat about the Droid was an experience that most iPhone users took for granted but was very slow to evolve among the Android OS phones - integration. There were very few custom-built cases or holders or docks or whatever for particular Android phones. The Droid itself had these, of course, as they were the flagship phone of Droid and Motorola at the time. The Droid 2 and 3 and 4 all followed a similar pattern.

What these phones had going for them that I would later find was relatively unique was a focus on integration - the SmartActions in the Moto Android overlay allowed you to fire off a bunch of auto-commands based on certain conditions, making things feel seamless. Putting the phone into the car dock made it automatically recognize it was there. Turning on the Bluetooth just had it automatically try to connect to whatever paired device it had saved. All of these things can be reproduced, in some way, by various third party apps that I am having to monkey together, but by this point, it should be effectively standard. Why do I have to tell the S4 to connect to my car's bluetooth when I turn the BT on and it's the only possible connection? Why won't the crappy third-party car dock (the one I had to get because there's not one for the S4 specifically) trigger the car dock mode when it's not getting power through a car charger? What's with all these stupid green/black buttons on my drop down menu and why can't I get rid of the useless pieces of crap? Where is my damned on-off toggle for wifi? OH THERE IT IS, BURIED IN SOME CRAP. 

Why doesn't the home screen have landscape mode, ffs. When a goddamned new phone or app does not have a landscape mode for the home screen, that, to me, is just shorthand for lazy crap.

What do I get in exchange for this poor attention to details that should be standard at this point? Well, there's Air Gestures, which is a neat gimmick but more of a marketing point than an actual useful feature. You wave your hand vaguely over the phone to make stuff stop or go. Answer the phone? Wave this way. Move a page, wave that way. You have to wave over the phone, so it's only barely more convenient than just reaching and hitting the button. Or, if you're reading something, guess what - the S4 is not a TV! You probably have the thing in front of your face anyway, so it's likely better to just move stuff normally, otherwise you look like you're batting at invisible flies. The flies are here! Air Gestures will train people for a year or so (before moving on to their next phone) to constantly make airy, dismissive gestures in front of them to make things go away. Samsung is aiding and abetting douchebag behavior.

There are other uses for Air Gestures, to be sure. But, like most weird, niche movement recognition interfaces, I'd wager 99% of the population using these things has no use for them.

And you do get the Smart Whatever Thing. The thing that reads if your eyes are on the screen. You can train the thing to stop playing a video if you look away. You can make it follow your eyes and scroll text when you read down. I have to hit 20 buttons to make my phone connect to my car now, when it used to be as easy as setting it in the dock, but at least now Chrome knows what part of that Christina Hendricks photo I'm looking at.

But then, I'm sure it always knew.

I guess my irritation is that it feels a little weird when you take it all together. Are you targeting this phone at the superuser? Then it's missing a lot of features that are pretty much standard now. Are you targeting the phone at casual users? Then it's got way too much shit on it. Half of these apps are just "Hey I Don't Know How to Organize Photos and My Social Media Is Super Hard, Samsung, Do It For Me Thanks" variants of whatever shape and size.

It's still a great phone, as they go. The fact I can boot it up in under 15 seconds, hit a few buttons, and stream an exceptionally clear re-run of 30 Rock is amazing. When you think of how complex the process of delivering that is, it is literally amazing. But the phone is not billed as "A fucking miracle pressed into a small case, you better fucking love it," it's the "most anticipated phone of the year" and "a symbol of cutting edge technology and convenience." I mean, if I got a car that didn't come with power locks or windows, I'd be a little confused but I'd understand that shit is not technically standard. But if I was sitting in a $60,000 Porsche and had to ask how to roll the windows down, it's a whole other deal.

What Samsung has done is sold me on a Porsche that has manual windows, but instead of that, I get a customized apple-corer in the dashboard. For all the apples their marketing folks think I probably eat.

This One Was Inevitable

So I'm just going to rant a little bit.

Given the concentration of money and privileged, generationally insulated folks in this area, I have (no joke) been quietly trying very hard not to get irritated at some of the shit I am seeing. I am already tired from travel and working while trying to see this city, going nonstop. So I know that part of it is just my relatively short temper at the moment. But god damnit people, listen to your fucking selves for just five minutes.

Kim and I were at some cutesy little corner Italian sidewalk cafe tonight, and I could not get past the nexus of entitlement and self-absorption I sat in the middle of. On one side of us was a table of thirty-something folks who had two Italian guys (or at least Italian speakers) with them. They were certain every word that came out of their mouth was just glazed in the well-won wisdom of world travel and deep experience. Except they were saying retarded, unfunny and unoriginal shit with a smugness and gravity that the actual content simply did not have. But, of course, they were worldly people who had such lengthy opinions about anything, and of course they really knew about wine and food. They were condescendingly patient with the woman they had with them, as well as the waitress.

I don't mind that the waitress had to deal with their shit, more on that in a minute.

To the other side, about ten minutes after we sat down, a trio of privileged little yuppie kids sat down, loudly proclaiming that everything is (literally) just the best ever!!! or oh god that is the worst. Louis CK has a good riff on people devaluing the shit out of expressive words, where people slowly and boringly describe something mundane as "sooo hilarious". This was in the similar vein, except this little ginger chick was super fucking animated about everything - with her tone, anyway. Everything is the most whatever. The most, man!  The sneering tanned kid tried to trump her from time to time, and the token gay guy would just add in the occasional shriek and/or "omg yes, yes, yes I KNOW" or just a series of  "MmmHMMMM, yes, I knooooowww," shit that is simply the stock filler line of any Bravo reality show.

I cannot stand people like this. Listening to the vapid, useless shit these kids talked about in their prescribed catalog fashions while they tried really hard to be the most interesting and dramatic person at the table - nay, the whole city block within earshot - just made me frown pretty deeply. These are people who look at the little airy, cardboard people on the CW or in "fashion lifestyle" bullshit publications and dive in headfirst into thinking that is life. They don't have an identity, they're renting it until a newer one comes out in a season or two.

Hilariously - and I do mean hilarious in this context - a party bus full of drunken women passed the intersection, and one of them rolled down a window to scream "I LOOOOVEE ROCK AND ROLL". The girl of this trio that had spawned whole from the forehead of a Vodka commercial rolled her eyes and sighed out, "Vapid whores." Yes, absolutely. Vapid whores. How dare they interrupt her super fascinating dissertation on exactly why the Great Gatsby is the best ever or how this vintage Atari is the coolest thing ever. Why are these things the most X ever? Let me go ahead and truncate this for you, you trifecta of tittering twats - they are the best and coolest because someone just told you it was the new shit. Great Gatsby? It's a book, I guess, right? Some movie just came out, but it's a movie about old things and classy-looking shit, thus you are deep and classy cuz you like it. And Atari? Well, that's a nerd thing, and we all know how cool it is to like the nerd things now (it makes you part of a secret club!!!!).

I don't know these folks, but what kills me the most is that their view of everything was so simple, so superficial, and so quickly formed. They'll grow up with their parents money, never really understanding how the problems of the world happen. Poverty? Well, obviously that's either just a string of bad luck or due to people being lazy and not wanting to work. The idea that there are generational systems and biases in place across race, gender, location, and existing income is just one or twenty levels of play too deep for these guys.

Or, possibly worse, something terrible might happen to them. That's another facet of the overall tragedy. These folks were 20-something, way past the age where most people absorb new information and change their views or their behavior without catastrophic change. Something terrible will have to happen to them for them to examine how the world - and their corner of it - works. That's where we are as a society, we have to punish people into becoming better at a certain point.

It's, like, the worst. Ever. 

My Private Life is an Inside Joke

You can just smell the seething white guilt.

So. I'm in Portland. There's a million places I might have been this week, but Portland was not the top of the list of places I thought I would visit this year if you had asked me at the start of it. Or really, ever. The town doesn't offend me in some great or minor way, I simply never gave it much thought. However, since I needed to bring some counselors to training (who eventually couldn't come), I found myself registered for a week-long training whoohah in the Rose City. Or the place where the dream of the 90s is still alive. Or whatever else is going on. I have to say, I'm glad I'm here, because I might have elsewise lived my whole life without ever coming, and I would have missed out.

But enough balanced introspection, let's make fun of hipsters and West Coast liberals. 

Pretty much as soon as we (Kim and I) landed, I was struck with how open and airy everything is. And I am not strictly speaking of buildings and various constructs across the city. Portland is physically very appealing to me - there are trees smashed into everything, and pedestrian/bike traffic is encouraged everywhere. But the cross messages of everyone both proclaiming how welcoming/open they are at the same time trying to pin down exactly what it is they like/value/accept is hilarious. There are so many shades of "accept me! value me! envy me!" that it kills me. It really is like some sort of extended caricature of hipster-ism. 

There, that's out of the way. It's true, by the way, every bit of the above. I'm not trying to do the thing where an observer points out the obvious issues and then tries to turn everything on its head by appreciating it anyway unabashedly (and to stir fake controversy). I just wanted to point that out but not dwell on it because, fortunately, I've managed to enjoy it all as a tourist. On Sunday, we checked in at the Waterfront and walked a bit along the park on the river. 

During a stop at a bistro (edit: sorry, GASTROPUB) having some local wine and locally-sourced farm fed herp herp herp food, a woman bikes past on a vintage fixed gear bike. In a wide brim white hat. And white sundress. And comically large sunglasses. With her little doggie riding in a custom made basket. And she wasn't so much pedaling as posing with her head tilted away, trying hard to look whimsical and carefree as she nearly ran into five or six people, one at a time, because she wasn't looking where she was going.

I will forever know this woman, in my heart, as the Spirit of Portland. Pretty, intentionally too quirky, basically alright and harmless, trying a little too hard... but in the end, probably pretty friendly and someone you'd wanna have around for a drink or interesting chat. 

The beer here has been, so far, overstated. Portland was said to be the Beervana of the Northwest by several sources, and all I can think is that perhaps I am not running into the right microbrews. Maybe I need to find the micro-micro-brews, you know... the ones you haven't heard of? I dunno. The beer here hasn't been bad, just disappointing after all the hype. To be fair, it was a lot of hype, so it's unlikely any place can live up to that mess. I have some pictures I'll put up later about the breweries I visited, but so far I haven't found anything I'd try to get back home. 

Class itself has been both hilarious and terrible, as these training sessions tend to be. They're usually full of people who are far, far too interested in properly representing oneself as a srs bsnss counselor and avenger of the people in both conversation and discussing intent, but few people seem to have any real grasp of what counseling and program execution is actually about. It's more important to rant about those damn banks and how horribly unfair X and Y is rather than actually talk about how to fix it, how to serve clients, or how to make an effective program. 

In short, whenever I feel like I am too wrapped up in anger and worry if I am competent/skilled enough for my job, I always find strong reaffirmation in these classes. While I learn relatively little, that bit of motivation is usually pretty helpful. Though the sad and depressing realization that these folks represent the majority of the counseling community is deeply depressing for a little while after. 

So far, I've avoided spending too much money on the little specialty boutique whoosit shops, which I'm happy with. You know the shops - the ones that seem to base their business model not on actual solvency, but asking themselves the question, "Hey, if someone walked into my shop, would they think 'oh wow look at all the needlessly complex and expensive variations on this relatively simple product that really doesn't actually need multiple iterations!'?"

Cuz these places are every damn where. It seems less important to have a good business, but instead a business that people can say "omg that's so clever!" when referring to the material at hand. Of course, living in Austin, this is a phenomenon I am deeply familiar with, but the number of these sorts of stores is staggering. 

On a sour note, it just feels like you have somewhat creative and interesting people no longer interested in being actually clever and advancing art or improving the world. They just walk to talk to each other and compliment each other on how fresh and hip their vapid, shallow idea is and then discard it to move on to the next vapid and shallow cutesy trend to set. These folks, I think, decided to introduce the term "taste maker" because "trend-setter" was too disturbingly accurate in painting just how shallow and useless their efforts were. These are the folks who think blogging and tweeting is a real job that makes them super interesting, I guess. 

...I say on my blog. I guess I exempt myself because I feel like I contribute.

Anyway, I'll wrap this one up before it gets too bitter. Portland is, despite my mini-rants, actually A++, would visit again, and I've got three more days here so far. The layout of the city, the public transportation, the shops, the region, the architecture, everything. My main complaint is the people, but I think genetics are kicking in and I will hate everyone eventually anyway while still trying to cheer them on and love everyone so.. yeah. Not Portland's fault, there. 

More brews and $300 vintage tie reports later. 

Sold my tortured youth, piss and vinegar
I'm still angry with no reason to be
At the architect who imagines
For the every man, blessed sisyphus
Slipping steadily into madness, now that's the only place to be free

"He's getting dance lessons."

Dinner.

We went to one of the Alamo events last night, something I had never done before - the Drink Tank. It was at the Alamo on Slaughter Lane, which I hadn't been to before, and was showcasing Japanese whiskies from Suntory as part of a presentation and showing of Lost in Translation. Sometimes I think I could be a whisky snob, but other times I think I just like the culture and backstories of distilleries and methods of creation and history. In any case, the Suntory stuff was pretty good. I had their Yamazaki before - it was something Kim picked out for Daniel and I when he was visiting - and they didn't have any of that tonight. Instead, as above, we had two whiskies and one plumb liqueur. 

Sadly, the plum liqueur is literally something you can't get in the states. Apparently, there's no real market for it here, and it's relatively rare. The other two were pretty solid, though - the Hakushu 12 year was strong, reminding me of a Glenfiddich 12 I like a lot. The Hibiki was a lot smoother and light, which was nice because I don't like blended whiskies that much usually. 

The movie itself was somewhat interesting. I've always had a weird irritation/fascination with Japanese culture. I think we go way overboard with people thinking it's somehow superior or just so goddamned mysterious and deep in ways dumb westerners just can't understand. It's really interesting, though, just how different it is, and I think there's something to appreciating that. 

Anyway, not a big post. Just wanted to dust this off and get more into the habit of posting. A lot of stuff I should be writing down.

Rag and Bone

It's ten days past my birthday, which is significant, and I'll get to that in a moment. But, this is a birthday post, so I'll talk about my birthday a bit. I'm 33, now. I think that becoming an adult is one of those things where few people actually feel like they are one, but at some point you look back and realize you have at least landed in their territory. Kind of like how you never really notice yourself tanning, or when the day was where your hair grows so long that you can part it, it just kinda happened along the way. I don't feel very adult, still, but I realized this month that I am deep in enemy territory.

I am looking at my Jeep and wondering if it's smart to trade it in for something more reliable and less gas expensive. This is not a thing I came to wonder on my own, but rather was forced on me by the Jeep itself. Given my way, I'd just have this Jeep forever, or until it rattles apart. But, things are getting more expensive, gas is going up, and my effective salary went down (taxes yay). So when faced with the choice of wtf to do, the car comes up.

In addition to that, I had to visit the doctor on the 7th, with my birthday being on the 8th. The diagnosis was that a minor internal infection had spiraled out of control mostly due to the poor attention I give myself. Again, something I would have happily continued doing if I was not forced to consider alternatives. Instructions: ten days of no alcohol due to the antibiotics, but DOUBLY so due to the dehydration. So no coffee either. And probably best to avoid anything sugary when drinking. For awhile. So that meant I got to go through my birthday sober - an interesting experience. Something I'd recommend everyone try at least once, but probably no more than that.

Pic I saved from my 30th

A lot of folks came by the house for my birthday, which was technically a two day affair. The party was Friday night, on the actual day, Folks came over and we shared the party with Claire, who had recently turned 30. This particular major milestone was stained by the loss of one of her dogs, sadly, so I don't think she was in much of a celebratory mood even a week later. I think back to my own 30th birthday, and that was one of the first things I had done with Claire and how it was really great to have so many friends out just having a good time. I don't suppose you should wait for certain special occasions  though, to make memories like that. But, it's just better that way (or easier) sometimes. So to lose an opportunity like that sucks. It's something you don't get back every again - it is permanently written that a particular milestone passed that way. No do-overs.

So with all that in mind, it was good to see several folks I hadn't seen in awhile then. We're not all best friends or even really close anymore, but it's fine. Not all your friends can be people you can trust to hide the bodies. It's good to have people you just know and like well enough. The world doesn't have to be a roster of people who only fit on a roster of "perfect human being, through and through," or "enemy of all things right and noble".

The next day was a full day marathon of all three Lord of the Rings extended versions. Ben, Nikki, Stephen, Tony, and Brenna came over. Ben, Brenna, and Tony couldn't stay all day, but the rest of us muddled through.

I don't know why I don't write about Stephen more. Maybe I'm afraid I'll jinx it. I should put it down somewhere so I don't forget, I guess. That's the point of these things. Stephen was there, things were good. Two days, and the Sunday after, I think. It's hard to remember as the whole weekend was a bit of a blur. It really feels like the birthday stretched out over three days. Maybe it did. Maybe this is the big one that I thought 30 would be. The whole "adult birthday".

I was sober. This is not a good omen. But I was aware of everything, kind of like adults are purported to be. I knew what was happening, and I wasn't trying to just pretend shit was ok and everything would work itself out - the car, the house, personal stuff, work. I was perfectly aware where it all was, and I was okay with it. The things that are good, I'm happy for. The stuff that needs work, I can work on. The stuff that has to go is making itself very obvious. And that's alright, too.

Guild Wars 2: Parallel Play, Not Multi-Player

I've been meaning to put some thoughts down about Guild Wars 2 for some time, and I wasn't too sure how to frame it to begin with. I liked GW2 when I bought it, even though I had my misgivings. I never played the first Guild Wars, and when previews/press started coming out for the second one, I wasn't really engrossed. This isn't to say I thought the game was crap or anything, I just didn't find myself interested with what I was seeing. I had previously played WoW, SW:TOR, City of Heroes, and even the old SW: Galaxies as well as other MMOs for short stints. Seeing GW2 just made me think it was another fantasy MMO with not much going on that was new or intriguing. But as someone who played WoW for so many years, I was in absolutely no position to judge folks for playing the same ol' thing over and over.

After it was released, some local friends picked it up. Watching some of them play and talk about it, I decided to go for it. Not because their tremendous salesmanship had turned my head, but because I frankly missed playing some sort of multiplayer game with them. My friends in Austin, for the most part, all have a shared interest in vidja games, so the fact we weren't doing this as a community just kinda... bugged me. Can't really explain it. So anyway, the game looked interesting enough and would let me do something online with the folks, so I picked it up.

From the get go, something about the game bothered me. The combat was interesting and a bit of a change from typical MMOs (but not so radically different that it required learning from Step 1), and the class system was interesting. I picked up a Mesmer with the idea of playing an Engineer and probably a Guardian in turn. I didn't do a whole lot of actual group play to begin with, but the game more than compensated for that - most people who are vaguely familiar with MMOs and GW2 have probably heard the comments about the geniusly simple "world group" system. There's no "tagging" mobs, and players can all sort've complete the same quests together even if they're not grouped. Add in that quests are handed to you when you move into the area the quests should be done in (and require no "turn in") plus the world events that people would flock to, and it came out pretty well. Taking out the competition of tagging mobs or fighting over quest kills or racing to resource nodes turned what is typically an adversarial experience on an open server into something else. Everyone had this feeling that the players were all in it together, and there was nothing to fight over. MMO socialism, really, if socialism involved a total lack of mundane concerns.

After awhile, though, the cracks began to appear. The great strength of this system began to bother me and I was more able to figure out what it was. Unlike other MMOs, which relied on what people call "the holy trinity" or the tank/healer/dps roles, GW2 had these features as noted above plus a specific effort to avoid splitting players into these roles. Additionally, so that players didn't feel like they HAD to bring certain classes or builds, most buffs and debuffs were widely available to any given class and were low-impact. Instead of a buff that made a HUGE difference in your damage output, there was one that was just noticeable but not critical. Players could combo their abilities together for neat effects, but these effects were either similarly low-power or relatively infrequent to pull off (or both).

The reality came to the fore, for me - in a great effort not to force people to group together or punish people for not grouping, Guild Wars 2 barely rewarded people who did. Groups were only slightly greater than the sum of their parts. In PvP, of course, group tactics and planning were king, but that had little to do with the actual mechanics and more to do with the players themselves choosing what/where/how to do things. In PvE, dungeons and group challenges always seemed to hinge on fights that were slow and repetitive and presented challenges that were just full of large numbers rather than real challenge so that players had to group up for them so they could overcome the large numbers through their own large numbers.

This is not to say that there were no such challenges or interplay to be had. Group events, raids, group PvP and all of that stuff is definitely there. It's just that the difference between playing in actual coordination with people and playing solo nearby them is not vast.

I couldn't really figure out these things and define how they bothered me until I was talking about Magic: The Gathering with a friend and I remembered my high school Chemistry teacher once remarking that she thought the whole game just looked like "parallel play" to her, not actual interplay. She didn't understand the game that well, of course, and as someone who valued logic lessons in all their forms she revised her opinion once she understood it better. But the point she made stuck with me - from the outset, MTG looked like two people on opposite sides of the table just fiddling with their own stuff. And that's how GW2 really boiled down to me - lots of players just playing their own game together, but not with each other. Just around each other.

It's a good game, don't get me wrong. And I'm not one to say that people shouldn't or can't enjoy something. But I think a definite lesson GW2 teaches is that it's entirely possible to go too far in the other direction.

Definite Definition

Pictured: Drunks and idiots carefully infiltrating adult society.

So, Christmas and New Year's have come and gone. I try to avoid the wrongheaded idea that we can mark our lives in chapters that easily line up with certain regular events like the end of the year or a birthday or whatever. However, these things are a good time to sit and reflect to see what has changed and is still changing (or remains the same) since the last time we stopped to take a moment and survey our lives. We ended 2012 with a small dinner party at the house, largely orchestrated and supplied by Kim, with me cleaning and acting like all the help I could be while not getting in the way. Everything I needed to ever learn about teamwork was taught by some person shooing me out of a kitchen and then telling me to come back in and help at alternating times.

It was a little weird having this very adult moment - people sitting around drinking nice wine out of expensive crystal while eating carefully prepared food. Of course, the moment was not exactly as it seemed. In between asking about where the wine was from or what spice or cooking method was used in what way, there was a lot of talk about dicks. So much dick talk. Probably asses, too, but who can keep it all straight anymore? I'm in no great hurry to brand myself an upstanding, responsible adult, but I think this is probably the apex of ascent to adulthood for myself and most of my friends. They're having children, which is alarming, because they're still doing things like wondering what would happen if one was to pee on particular things. God only knows they might even encourage their children to do it, since that's slightly more acceptable by society. So that's us, as adults - being mature enough to not piss on things ourselves.

2012 itself opened in the middle of difficulty for me and several people in my life. Thought it had been months since Kim and I had broken up, it still felt very fresh and raw. Navigating that through the year could be called "difficult", which is a ridiculous understatement. It's in the same vein as saying a blast furnace is somewhat uncomfortable to sit in. We both did our best to come through this still friends, but it was not easy at any given time.

A lot of my year really seemed to revolve around me getting my feet back under me and deciding what kind of life I was going to have in the aftermath. I put a lot of work into my job at Cornerstone, and I picked up a lot more work with AEG for the purpose of just getting back into the grind of writing constantly. I may have gone too far in that direction, as I realize looking back I shed a lot of my recreational pursuits so that I could work on various projects almost nonstop. Although I enjoy the work I do most of the time (at both jobs), it gets to be a little stressful when everything is an endless series of tasks you handle one at a time while looking at the infinite row beyond the current one.

I think it helped, though. Sometimes you just have to try things and see if they fit, and in this case I don't think it did. But by doing so, I learned to be a lot more confident in what I do and confident about who I am. 2012 was, for the most part, an unsteady walk through unmarked territory. Not a fight, but just an ongoing moment where I kept wondering if I should just turn back.

Overall, it felt like a long year for a lot of people. Not necessarily a bad one, but one where things just kept going on. Change, loss, gain, new directions, new information, different choices, and so on. The year just constantly slapped you in the face, saying, "Nothing sticks around forever, and apparently few things stick around for very long at all, buddy."

One of my most annoying habits - my inability to detach myself from particular moments in time or memories - seemed to come full circle. The feeling that I was always just a short step from going back to any given point in my life, any given friendship, or any given period of opportunity... that seemed to fade pretty quickly this year. Maybe it was when I went back to KC and it felt like I just didn't have the chance to see people. When I went to Jake's wedding and realized some people do just fade out of your life. Maybe it was kicking and fighting most of the year to help keep the office open.

I do have a few goals for the year. I need to get back in the habit of journaling more. I'm going to want to look back and remember things one day, and I'd hate to have so little context for my own life. I need to make sure I make the most of my time but I stop running full speed all the time. I want to really fight to get certain goals accomplished this year, but I need to remember how to just relax and actually catch a damn break more often. I sit around too much thinking "what should I be doing what should I be doing what should I be doing..." and it just brings too much stress. I went ahead and opened up several of my MMO accounts and got a shit ton of Steam games to try and get back to it, but we'll see. Whenever a show says they're "getting back to basics", it's like a death knell, because all they're saying is "we have nothing new to offer, nothing creative, so we're just going to try and retread old shit everyone seemed to like." So hopefully I'm not just getting back to basics, but pushing forward, too. I never really figured out what I was going to do with my life, and I think that's starting to be a problem since I'm still living it.

Or maybe I'm just rambling and no one else will get this.

I think I'll go home and mull this over, before I cram it down my throat
At long last it's crashed, its colossal mass has broken up into bits in my moat.

Lift the mattress off the floor, walk the cramps off, go meander in the cold.
Hail to your dark skin, hiding the fact you're dead again.
Underneath the power lines seeking shade.
Far above our heads are the icy heights that contain all reason

It's a luscious mix of words and tricks that let us bet when you know we should fold
On rocks I dreamt of where we'd stepped, and of the whole mess of roads we're now on.

Hold your glass up, hold it in
Never betray the way you've always known it is
One day I'll be wondering how I got so old just wondering how.
I never got cold wearing nothing in the snow.

This is way beyond my remote concern of being condescending

All these squawking birds won't quit building nothing, laying bricks.

Debate Time, Late Time!

So, Presidential Debate #2. In order to prep for this, I got a bottle of Bushmills, watched the two-parter 30 Rock about Valentine's Day and Ikea, and some Daily Show. I figured I was good and prepared. I wasn't too sure what to expect at this point, as Biden/Ryan was actually exactly what I thought it would be, but everyone was speculating on what Obama's "comeback" performance would be like. Trying to empty myself of expectations, I flip on the XBox Live feed and get to it.

I remember during the last election when there was a moment in a town hall meeting where a lady talked to John McCain and referred to Obama as a Muslim. There was a second in McCain's eyes where he seemed to realized just how deep the rabbit hole was at that point. McCain was never a particularly clean or perfect candidate, but you usually got the impression he was earnest in what he was saying or believed overall. While I'm looking at the debate waiting to start, I wonder if there'll ever be a moment where Romney is taken aback by the corner he's put himself in logically with his phantom tax plan and promises.

What a lot of folks don't seem to understand is that Romney is effectively a construct of what the Republicans thought Obama was in 2008 (and beyond): Someone who says anything that sounds good at the time, rails against how things are, and doesn't have any logical consistency in his pledges. It's funny to see people voting for Romney for all the reasons they thought Obama was an empty suit four years ago, I guess.

The camera pans over to the moderator, who mentions her job is to see that the questions will get answered and time is stuck to correctly. Let's see how well that holds up. With those huge shoulders, she seems somewhat more likely than Leherherheeher to actually bodycheck someone when time is called.

First question is about employment. What always kills me about this question is how little real control the President has over direct employment issues. And yet we keep batting it around like the President should be responsible for it. Romney starts by saying thanks to the moderator, Obama, the audience, Jesus, God, Mickey Rooney, Alf, and anyone else he could think of. He then digs into the question and touts his public education program in Mass, which kills me a little since he wants to minimize/destroy the Dept of Ed. Obama doesn't start by thanking everyone on the planet for being there, so I'm sure FOX or someone will notice how "rude" he is. He mentions Detroit "surging" back again, which sucks, since "surging" is not the best word ever for what actually happened. Eugh. So far, some predictable back and forth about who is going to do more damage in the next four years.

Romney gets to the follow up question about people in long-term unemployment. Naturally, he responds by bashing Obama's policies, which always kills me. What policies? Republicans have spent the last four years blocking the left from doing nearly anything. There have been very few "Obama's policies" that have any reason to be bashed. He also mentions Obama allowed GM to go bankrupt just like he said should have been done. Obama fires back by just talking about how Romney's policies favor the rich. Great, awesome. Answer the damn question, man.

Romney gets up to get a second rebuttal and is asked nicely to sit down. Actually happens. Shocking.

Next, a question about gas prices - something else the President has little control over (compared to what we think he can do). There's some talk about investing in businesses and domestic production, which is good. He mentions by shaving off demand, the gas prices go down, which makes sense. Obama is making a good case here for tying his answer into the previous question by stating domestic energy businesses will help. Romney goes into the "let's look at the President's policies" routine again, starting with a reduction of licenses, and then talks about how apparently the President doesn't walk the walk because he... uh... doesn't just hand licenses to everyone and allows people to drill and mine even if they break rules? Romney cites that Obama stated the gains in domestic energy production are up, and then asks the rhetorical question of "where did those gains in production come from" but never answers it. I dunno where he was going with that. Probably something of a logical handwave like Ryan did with the unemployment number last week. "But unemployment is at 10% in your hometown, Biden, thus unemployment is up, technically."


Romney is talking a lot about, effectively, achieving energy independence through a total or large loss of regulation. Personally, I pass on this notion, but it's at least something. He wants to hand out more licenses and allow more production, but isn't speaking to how that can be done safely.

Moderator asks a new question about gas prices, Obama says something mildly related about efficiency, and then gets back to the previous question, using this to get a second rebuttal. Like a dog with a Goddamned bone. Because of that circle-back, they're getting into it now. Romney says the President cut licenses in half, Obama denies it, Romney says "what's the new amount", and then we get into a bunch of "uh huh" "nuh uh" crap. Moderator has really lost control of what's going on here. She brings it back to gas prices, and Obama says the gas prices were low due to an impending economic collapse. I don't think I quite followed that, and I'm not sure a lot of folks will see the connection either.

Someone needs to give the Moderator the ability to cut the mic on either person. She tries to steer it back on task, and Romney throws a grown up tantrum, just stuttering and talking over her.

Oh man, now someone is asking about the tax plan Romney has. Credits, loopholes, and all that, and how it will actually all add up. Romney starts with some stats on budgeting and spending which is... I dunno. Not relevant? So he starts talking about tax credits and capping a total amount of deductions, and gives a "I'll pick a random number" example which is a horrible idea. We're trying to determine the specifics, here, guy. Buddy. Pal. He keeps saying that the middle class is being "buried", but not exactly how in regards to taxes. Obama gives some usual pandering to the middle class, and then goes to the $250k tax increase plan. He mentions a realistic view that crap just has to be paid for, and taxes have to be paid. He hits Romney on his record plus what he's said previously about taxes - cuts for the higher end. At this point, it's just a simple yes/no battle: Will Romney stick with what he's (vaguely) saying he'll do, or do what he's done and his Party is more prone to doing?

As a side note for Romney: Giving capital gains tax deductions to people who make under 250k is not substantial at all.

Obama goes back to the Big Bird thing. Let it die, man. Please let it die. It's a crappy, oversimplified meme, and it's nowhere near as clever or funny as people want to think.

Moderator: "If the taxes don't add up, will you..."
Romney: "Well of course it will add up. Now let me talk about the deficit and how Obama is to blame for all of it."

While she's having an ok time keeping people on the clock, this is a pretty good way to not get people to answer their questions. Romney gets back to trying to overtalk the moderator and is looking more desperate and spun than aggressive.

We now get a question about pay equality, which is interesting. Pay equality is an actual legal issue and societal one, and it's one that people just take on as a fact of life. Obama goes on about how women have had an impact on his life, mentions the Lily Ledbetter Act as an example of advocacy. I'm curious, really, to hear Romney's answer on this because the GOP has been really women unfriendly these past few years. In the middle of his answer, Obama mentions he "cut out the middlemen" in student lending, and Romney perks up a bit. I imagine he's going to have that comment shoved in his face about jobs.

Romney answers the question about how he had to go out of his way to hire women. He mentions child concerns as if that's the unique purview of women. He's just trying to sound concerned about women, but won't say what he's going to do other than "make it better than the last 4 years." Romney, do you understand what pay and employment inequality actually is? I don't think you do. Obama comes back with just the generally bad record the GOP and Romney have with women.

So this next person gets up and brings up the specter of Bush. She asks the question in a great manner - "I'm worried about Republican policy, like Bush's," rather than just dumping things on Bush. Romney comes out with a rebuttal out of turn once again, looking a little desperate and thrown still. He reverses his stance on birth control yet again, which is not a shocker. Romney, to my huge surprise, freely says Bush was wrong and outright says the GOP is too focused on big business. Just says it outright. If this was coming from anyone who wasn't Romney, it'd be heartening. From this guy, it just sounds like another in a long line of things he's saying that people want to hear.

This question is practically a gimmie for Obama to slam and slam and slam both Bush and Romney. He has a lot of good shots in here.

Next question - "Obama, what have you done for me lately?", effectively. Obama goes over a few things he's managed to help the economy and industry, but largely avoids the question. He states most of the commitments he's made, he's kept... but the ones he hasn't isn't lack of trying. I don't know if I can agree on that. Romney just comes up and says, "I think you know better." This is a reverse of the previous question - a gimmie for Romney to knock around Obama for a bit. Romney uses the time well to showcase the shortcomings of the administration, of which there are many.

Romney uses "we have his record to look at" during this time, which is a poor plan. You don't want us to look at records vs what we say, buddy. Chief. Guy.

Immigration question: Romney opens with "Did I get that right?" about her name. This is going WELL RIGHT OFF. And now he's comparing his white born-in-Mexico father and Welsh mother to the immigrants from Mexico who are Latino. What a fumble. What. A. Fumble. Brings up a good point about Obama's lame record on immigration vs his promises. Obama goes in to some detail about what he's done, including stepping up border patrols, which is not the greatest. He mentions that if you're going to deport folks, you want to target criminals first.

Moderator asks a new question, Romney flatly says, "No, let's talk about..." and then goes back to previous points. The problem is that Obama keeps remembering what Romney actually said. You say that the villified Arizona model of immigration reform is "THE model", and then want to back off that, but you can't. People remember. Romney is not enjoying that. He keeps trying to take control of the debate and is really upset he doesn't get to do whatever he wants on his timeline.

The next question is about Libya and scaling down security in the embassy. Most of this is a re-hashing of the same back and forth about how Obama is a bad leader and Obama claiming he is clamping down and controlling this stuff. No one really answers the question. Obama makes an interesting stand, taking the responsibility for what's going on, pushing off a claim that Sec Clinton should have to deal with it. Romney tries to put Obama's words out of order, the Moderator puts it back in the actual chain of events, to some applause. Romney then just repeats the attack with more vague terms so he can keep it.

Question about assault weapons, per a 2008 promise to keep them out of the hands of criminals. The President shares some touching story but nothing useful and some comments about what he MIGHT and WILL do. Talks some about making people just better, which is a nice rainbows and roses strategy. Interestingly, he does mention that handguns are the real problem in regards to guns and deaths. Romney rebuts saying he's not about adding more gun control (though he has actually done more for gun control than Obama has), and then goes into some faff about schools and parents. Moderator calls Romney out on the fact he put down an assault gun ban, and Romney says that it was agreed upon by both the gun control folks and the gun freedom folks. Romney then states that it was a great example of bipartisanship! Obama starts laughing.

Obama points out Romney changed his mind on guns to get the NRA on board.

Question comes up about overseas trade imbalance, and Romney somehow gets on "trickle down government" and how it doesn't work. What? Why are we here? This is about as bad as how the gun question somehow became a referendum on schools. There's just a bunch of general statements about taxes and tax code. Obama brings up a good point about tax-free gains overseas.

Question from the mod about getting labor jobs back here, Romney says that China just steals things from us and that's going to have to stop. Like, "they're hacking" and whatever. And he was going to label them "currency manipulators". Obama states flatly some of those jobs are gone and we need to aim for higher, better jobs. What on earth, you two.

Personal question now about dispelling misconceptions about themselves. Romney tries to say he loves ALL of America! And then goes on to talk a bit about himself and God and the Olympics and the stuff he's done with his record. Funny to watch him go on about his health care plan and public education. What party is he with, again? Obama goes for the misconception that he supposedly thinks government creates jobs, and that people think he wants to take from some and give to everyone else. Then he hammers away at the 47% comment some.

All in all, I'm saying Obama did better on this one, but it wasn't a beating one way or another. The damage done to Romney was done to himself most of the time. Obama spent way, WAY too much time going on about how Romney is bad and scary and won't do anything good. Listen, man - the reason why people were so lab monkey apecrap for you four years ago is because you had a series of ideas. Sure, they were oversold, but at least you had a direction. This run of the mill brand of "my opponent sucks, America. Vote for not my opponent," is sad. Sad.

The Hammer is... apparently public domain.

Our waitress at Weber Grill. She was seriously that excited.

So this past weekend was GenCon, and I decided that I would engage in a tradition that I had avoided for well over a decade of con-going: Costumes. I had put together a pretty decent Captain Hammer outfit this past Halloween and thought that it might be neat to dress up on Saturday for the con just to say I had done it once. I'm glad I brought it because I saw several people try it and fail miserably, so I felt I was also doing some justice to the whole character*. Overall, it was a positive experience, but it was a pretty enlightening one, as well.

I should start this off by saying my attitude towards anyone who dresses up in costume at a con is that you are in fact doing it for some level of attention. That attention may not be on a personal level ("Look at me!" vs. "Look at how much work I put into this fantastic outfit!"), but you are putting something on display and need to accept some of that one way or the other. Not that it is ALL okay, of course, but the looks and everything are just going to be par for the course. So with that in mind, as someone who has never done anything really on par with this, I have to say I found the sudden constant stares a bit unnerving. I think anyone who does this their first time and either doesn't adjust to it (I did, eventually) probably shouldn't repeat the experience. Anyone who keeps doing this and complains about people staring or asking for photos, though, is being a bit obtuse.

I got to the hall a little past 10:00am and walked in. I think I settled into the pose without thinking about it, since the heavy black gloves just make you want to curl your hands into fists. Right off the bat, I had people walking by and putting their hands up for a high-five. People would turn and watch me walk, stopping what they were doing, or just stare as we passed. They would stare openly, which would be creepy if I were in street clothes, but I accepted this might happen. People began singing various songs from the production at me, which was kind of neat, and a few folks stopped and politely asked me to take a photo with them in various pose requests.

So here's where it began to take a bit of a dark turn.

Like I said before, I understand that on some level, you become a bit of community property in this situation. As someone who is a familiar face for a small gaming company at this con and at their regional tournaments, I'm used to this some. But it was that taken to the nth degree for certain. 90% of the folks were nice, cheerful, enthusiastic, but respectful. They'd say "Oh, hey, can you stop so I can take a photo," or "Can I take a photo with you," or "Hey grab that guy in the white coat and goggles and smile real big while you punch him repeatedly!" That last one did not actually happen, but I was constantly hoping it would. I'd set my bag down, do as I had been asked, shake hands or exchange some comments about the show or costume and be on my way.

The other 10%, though... well, they stuck out a lot more. On several occasions, people would literally shout and/or order me to stand still so they could get a shot. They weren't doing it in a loud, "I need to get your attention over the crush of people here," way. They were doing it in a "WHY ARE YOU MOVING JESUS CHRIST STAND STILL HOW DARE YOU BE WALKING" way. I'll be honest, I tried to be good-natured about it (and again, if I went off on someone here, I didn't know how that would play out for my second job), but the first couple of times I complied out of sheer confusion and feeling a bit stunned. Some among this group of jerks would even pat me on the chest like I was working for them and give me a "great, buddy" in a condescending way before they wandered off.

And then we had three super weird instances that made me stop and think about how difficult women in costume have it. Keep in mind, the Captain Hammer outfit is almost completely body-covering. Some of your forearm and elbow is really all that sticks out. The pants are bulky combat style things. I guess the shirt is a little form-fitting, but that's about it. There's nothing even mildly sexual about this outfit, and yet:

- One young woman asked to take a photo with me, and her friend took out her camera. As soon as I agreed, she ran over, wrapped a hand around my waist, and sort've... I dunno. She turned towards me and kinda did a weird press-and-slide sort of move. I am not a crazy person for thinking that the bits of her she decides to rub on me made this really forward. After the shot was done, she gave my backside a firm squeeze, and ran off with her friend.

- A guy about my age (30-ish) asked for a photo in the same way, his friend taking it. He slung his arm around my shoulder immediately, did a thumbs up with his free hand, and the shot was taken. Once that was done, he let his hand drop down, gave my bits a friendly pat with a smirk, and wandered off not even having the good grace to giggle off embarassedly like the girl had.

- In the dealer hall, a couple of folks behind a booth asked for photos, which I was happy to do (trying to avoid the traffic of people in the booth lanes). After that, one of the women asked me if I had ever considered doing a Malcolm Reynolds costume because, "you have the hair for it." She said this leaning forward and whispering it in a weird porn-sexy sort of way. I laughed, thinking this was some sort of joke, but she was seriously just coming on to me like something out of a tape you don't leave marked.

These were interspersed through the day along the really positive experiences** (our waitress at Weber flipped out over the costume, it was hilarious), but those three really stood out and - even with a few days passing - seem to just sour me to doing it ever again. It really made me think of what some girl in an Aerith costume or something relatively neutral like that has to deal with. I don't think I'm specially enlightened or more perfectly understand the problems women gamers have to cope with, but I thought I might want to share that. I know a lot of folks really understand that there's an acceptable line, even for the folks we dismiss as attention whores - no one (sane) is saying this sort of behavior is ok. I was just a little surprised by how easily and flippantly that line gets crossed.



(**I didn't consider that the company meeting was that same day, and I have yet to know if showing up to it like that raised or lowered my capital)

(*sidenote to this, there was a woman dressed up as Captain Hammer, and the question was asked "So... so... what IS the hammer, now?" I don't think she got it, she looked real confused)

Northern Downpour

Yesterday, I got to give a mod nudge to someone on a board I run about the use of the word "rape" in the context of winning a game. It was a pretty easy nudge, even though I know no one likes being moderated pretty much ever. I didn't hand out any warnings or bans, just a reminder that the board had a mixed, multi-age user pool and rape wasn't a neutral word for everyone, so we should avoid using it needlessly. The response was predictable. Someone went so far as to say that because certain women are so sensitive and easily scarred by the use of a simple word, their meek and helpless behavior invites rapists to target them. And of course, let's not forget, rape culture is an invented problem. The juxtaposition of those two arguments together literally made me laugh. It was just too absurd.

Later the same day, a friend of mine posted Gamasutra's article on the Male Gaze to her Facebox. I'll be upfront here - terms like "rape culture" and "male gaze" trigger an eyeroll reflex in me. Not because I don't think they're real things, they just have the sound of terms people use when they're being self-righteous crusaders (I have similar issues with "misandry" and "heteronormative"). So when other people want to be completely dismissive of the ideas wholesale, I sympathize a bit and try to explain the whole concept in words that don't necessarily evoke imaginary ideas of jackbooted feminists in overdefensive folks.

Yesterday, that went terribly wrong. A friend of the original poster began with the usual "well men are objectified too!" schtick, which is something else I think holds a little merit. But, unfortunately, people tend to use this argument as a way to prove objectification of women either isn't that bad, or isn't a problem. I argue with this fine gentleman that while objectification of men certainly does happen, it's not nearly on the scope or as damaging as what happens to women so pervasively. This is when the real stunner came - he started making arguments that he didn't see how people could connect the portrayal of women in the media (I kept trying to keep the argument to the context of gaming, since that's what the article was about, but he was pretty firm in ignoring that) to anything sexist or misogynist. He then started demanding I prove that such a phenomenon happens. He was, in essence, trying to make me prove sexism at all was a real thing with real contributing factors.

I knew exactly where this was going, but tried anyway. Naturally, everything I mentioned or pointed to was dismissed as opinion or speculation. I mean, of course we can't view with 100% accuracy into the minds of people and determine their motivations for sure, but I think after enough patterns of behavior, we can be confident. What the man effectively was asking me was on par with saying "Well you can't prove racism is real behavior." I mean, I was just not prepared to have to prove the sun rises and sets, either. Every study was "opinion" and every instance of a person being blatantly sexist was anecdotal or anomalous.

He went on to say that little boys and basement dwelling nerds engage in such behavior, but that just magically evaporates when said men and boys are exposed to the real world. This was, of course, after some lengthy assertions that he knew exactly what women wanted, what turns them on, and what appeals to them (after furiously attacking me for assumptions of motivation). It struck me from how this guy talked that he himself was probably never really rude or condescending towards women. I bet that his friends really aren't, even. But since he doesn't surround himself with horrible people, the idea that women are treated in this way is so outside his monkeysphere that it simply rings false or at least wildly exaggerated to him.

So, I guess that's just something I wanted to share for everyone's data point about this sort of behavior. We have people so fundamentally self-deluded through multiple angles that they can go so far as to state sexism isn't a thing. It's mind blowing, really, and I think until yesterday I really couldn't fathom how it might happen.