I've linked worse for less

Right, watch this video. Then? Watch it again. Then? Send it to your friends. They've got it set up so that they get money for every view. And while nerds shouldn't dance, this is a pretty good cause, no?

Also, that song is still really terrible. Here, have a better version that's got a Minecraft bent.

Much better. So right, go now, help fight cancer!

Believe it or not, this isn't a copout

From Bash.org:

IronChef Foicite: well, there's a lot of reasons IronChef Foicite: i mean, roses only last like a couple weeks IronChef Foicite: and that's if you leave them in water IronChef Foicite: and they really only exist to be pretty IronChef Foicite: so that's like saying IronChef Foicite: "my love for you is transitory and based solely on your appearance" IronChef Foicite: but a potato! IronChef Foicite: potatos last for fucking ever, man IronChef Foicite: in fact, not only will they not rot, they actually grow shit even if you just leave them in the sack IronChef Foicite: that part alone makes it a good symbol IronChef Foicite: but there's more! IronChef Foicite: there are so many ways to enjoy a potato! you can even make a battery with it! IronChef Foicite: and that's like saying "i have many ways in which I show my love for you" IronChef Foicite: and potatos may be ugly, but they're still awesome IronChef Foicite: so that's like saying "it doesn't matter at all what you look like, I'll still love you"

On an unrelated note,  I'd like to throw my voice in with the multitudes who have been making sad noises over the loss of Steve Jobs. He has been perhaps the most influential mind in computing for most of his lifetime, and while he was probably a huge asshole, he was also one whose products have completely changed how we handle computing, media, information transfer, movies, what have you.

In this interview, Jobs said (Specifically regarding Apple's role in computing history):

I usually believe that if one group of people didn't do something, within a certain number of years the times would produce another group that would accomplish similar things.

And this is probably true! That said, Apple was the first to really make computer a viable option for home consumers. The first to widely adopt Mice and GUIs. The first to completely drop floppy disk support (and is leading the way in dropping CD support). The first to create an MP3 player that everyone could find and easily use. The first with an online music store. The first widely accepted Smartphone. The first true tablet computer. Quite frankly, they have defined and redefined what computing has done. And that's just Apple when it was under Jobs. Love Pixar? Thank Steve Jobs. Like the internet? The world wide web (which isn't the internet exactly, but it's the system we're using now) was developed on a NeXT computer. Like OS X or features like OS X? They all draw from NeXT, the company that Jobs oversaw in his decade long exile from Apple.

Honestly, I wouldn't be typing this all out, because everyone is typing something like this out. But I think that if there was one person I wanted to meet that was currently living, it would have been Jobs. I may not have been able to say much, but I would have liked to have let him know just how much his products and design philosophy have affected my life. I'm fairly certain he knew, but still.

The world has lost one of its greatest minds of the last generation. There's not much more to say than that.

Desert Island 10: Maple Story

Let's say I wind up on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean somewhere. Say some all powerful imp did this to me. And he let me keep ten games for the rest of my miserable life. These are those ten games.

Maple Story - Wizet, Nexon 2003 - Current


The Basics


It's a Korean MMO. I mean, I really don't want to say a whole lot about it. There isn't a whole lot to say about it. After choosing a server, you're presented with a 2D world that you traverse from left to right, and a bunch of enemy monsters that take a certain amount of hits to kill. You level up, and along the way you pick up new equipment, money, and eventually move into stereotypical MMO jobs such as a Thief, a Mage, a Useless Body Builder, a Cleric, whatever. These jobs have later evolutions which further specialize you.


I mean, it's an MMO. At a certain point, they all play roughly the same way. Create a character, choose a class, disseminate points you earn, kick a lot of monster ass. Same old, same old.


Why It's Here


God help me I like it.


Well, maybe like is too strong a word. Maybe hate the least is closer to the truth. Whatever the reason, I find myself inexorably drawn back to it every now and then for absolutely no discernable reason.


If I had to guess though, the reason I keep returning to this infernal game isn't because the game itself is good. In fact, it's pretty far from good. While the progression is actual a load of fun and you always feel more powerful with each level up, the point is moot because the difference between different genuses of monsters in regards to their HP and Defence are levels of magnitude. You will be killing the same snails and mushroom spores you start on for at least your first five levels, and while the EXP required to get to the next level seems to go up exponentially, the EXP you're actually getting from every kill stays the same.


What it all comes down to is that while it's fun enough to actually play, in that you don't really come across 2D MMOs terribly often, there isn't a whole hell of a lot to recommend it. The art style isn't terrible, but it's not really fantastic either. The userbase is terrible in that early internet use way where everyone has a "xGokUx_399" username (though that's changed since the early days, now it's all Naruto in place of Dragonball). The leveling system is ridiculously unbalanced and takes forever. The world design, because it's composed of 2D interconnected scenes, tends to get confusing whenever there are three exits on a map, which happens far too often to be really good. The economy is also pretty much shit, where buying a single HP potion will take something like 25 of the lowest enemy type, if you're lucky. MP pots are twice that, and that's not even getting to the higher level potions. Or equipment. Or consumable items that some classes need to actually function effectively.


So with all those reasons to hate it, I guess I should actually give some justification as to why I'm including it. I mean, this is a pretty shitty game. Even for MMOs, which aren't exactly good in the first place. But yeah. I guess I don't really have a good reason why it's here.


I mean, the primary one is that I've never managed to bring a character up to the third tier. I've always been curious as to what's up there, what the end game is actually like. And while the art style is pretty balls, it's also not the worst. And the equipment design is actually pretty interesting sometimes, in that anime sort of way. So it's not particularly good, but it's never exactly boring.


Additionally, there's just something about it that I can't really deny. I started playing this back in high school, as a way of spending time with a close friend. It actually worked on a 56k modem, even if it took forever to download, patch, and connect. That lasted for a few months, at which point I promptly uninstalled and left it for dead. At least, until Senior year of high school, when I actually picked it up again because I was curious about it. I played for a few months, set it down, and left it for dead again. The cycle repeated again in college a couple times.


I don't know! Maybe it's because of the userbase that I keep going back to it. I mean, as terrible as "xXx_sasuke36_xXx" is, there's something primal there. It reminds me of the early days of the internet, when I first started actively browsing. Of the early days, back when Excite.com was the premier web e-mail service, back when MSN Messenger was a new and mysterious technology. It's not good, but it's nostalgic. It's comforting.


Doesn't make the game any better. Maybe it's just because I'm a masochist and I don't want myself to have good things.

Back to work!

Hey, I've got a job! And I may have beaten whatever bout of depression I've gone through. Before I start the words flowing again, though, I should give folks a bit of joy in there.

Best quest? Y/Y

In the name of baseball, amen

So I should probably hate Shoeless Joe.

I mean, really. I don't have much reason to like it. The language is, at least at first blush, really needlessly florid. Every sentence has a simile or a metaphor or an adjective, and it gets ridiculous. I don't know who talked to one Mr. Kinsella, but they forgot to tell him that not everything needs extra detailing. This florid language honestly tripped me up more than I really like to admit, so it was a pain getting in to the book in the first place.

And then you get to the subject matter, which really stopped me full on for most of the book. I mean, it's about baseball.

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike baseball, per se, so much as I think it's the most boring and ridiculous sport that is actively played. And I say that knowing full well that some people take Quidditch seriously.

I mean, I just don't see the appeal. You put a bunch of people in a field, some guy throws a ball, some other guy hits it, and then the guy that hit it runs in a circle and the other guys throw a tiny white sphere around. At least hockey has brutal checks, football has pileups, and tennis and soccer are both way more kinetic. So, of all sports, baseball is the one that I absolutely have no attachment to. So I was happy enough to read through the book, and near around page 150 I was just slogging through to say that I've read it.

It doesn't help that it's pretty much the exact same as movie it inspired.

But then I hit page 150, and the book veered wildly, both from the movie and from my previous expectations of the book.

At that point, the book becomes something transcendant, something that isn't about baseball. Sure, it's based on and uses the lexicon and syntax of baseball. I've no idea what an ERA is besides a period of geologic time, but it's mentioned. I don't know exactly how good a .300 batting average is, and I don't care. The book knows, but it doesn't care. Baseball isn't the point anymore.

The point is finding something to love more than life. The point is finding something that drives you and a group of like minded individuals. The point is religion, but without that pesky God shit behind everything.  The point is being a fan, regardless of what happens when and to whomever it happens to. And that ultimately everything can be transcendant enough to become that way.

I don't understand the first thing about baseball. But I understand fandom to the point of obsession.

And at that point, the book had me, completely. I could, and did, forgive it for it's purple prose, because it needs its prose for something more. I could tolerate its baseball speak, because Kinsella is just using baseball as a relatively simple metaphor for a greater understanding of something uniquely huge and human. And I could based entirely on the strength of its convictions. Of its absolute acceptance of nostalgia and shared understanding and a religious fervor shared by all fans of a certain level of obsession of everything, from Jesus to Gundam to baseball to politics to Midwestern tourist traps.

When I was planning on writing this post (which was supposed to happen tomorrow), I was going to start off with "I hate Shoeless Joe" because that's how I was feeling at the time.

Then it had the gall to actually hit me right in the understanding. Right in the understanding! What a dick move! But it did it, and I think I actually have to say that I love Shoeless Joe. What a difference 100 pages can make.

That said, I'd really rather they had just left the author as a reference to J.D. Salinger rather than actually using J.D. Salinger. That bothers me, for whatever reason. Maybe because I really, really love the idea of Darth Vader talking about "Peace, love, and dope, man."

So is this more or less sad...

...than the people who cheered for the guy who killed a lot of people while in office?

Yeah.

In other, not quite as sad news....

It approaches.

9/11: A Decade Later

(Photo found here.)

So yeah. It's been 10 years since 9/11. I mean, yeah, I could just post my story here and call it good, since that seems to be what everyone else is doing. And I mean, that's pretty big. I was in class when we first heard of the towers being hit, specifically.... somethings like printing? Anyway, the teacher for that was a hard ass on the best of days, and told us to just continue working throughout. That was that. The next class was band with Reynolds, and he took us to the library to watch the TVs for the hour. The rest of the day was pretty dour.

At the time, I know I commented as such that this was the beginning of World War III. Personally, I'm glad that hasn't happened! Yet, anyway.

So with that out of the way, I figured that a better way to spend today would be reflecting on exactly where we are after 10 years. I mean, it's tragic, yeah, and the fact that it happened should never be forgotten, nor should the people who risked their life to help as many people as they possibly could.

That said, in my reflection, it's a little depressing just how applicable the picture at the top of this post is.

Now, that photo (if you're too lazy to click the link to the article) was taken not terribly long after the incident, as you notice from the smoldering pile of the then-fresh wreckage. But unlike every other photo from the time, people aren't rushing in. They aren't standing around in awe. They aren't praying to flags or saluting or anything. They're sitting around, shooting the shit. It's like the disaster is the furthest thing from their mind. They're complacent to it already.

The article I cited said that this picture serves as "...an allegory of America's failure to learn any deep lessons from that tragic day, to change or reform as a nation: "The young people in Mr Hoepker's photo aren't necessarily callous. They're just American."" Honestly, I can't disagree.

I mean, just look at 9/11. There are a lot of potential lessons we could have taken away from that most fateful day. Instead of contemplating, perhaps changing, we rushed into Afghanistan after the terrorists who did it. Which is great, but it's also one of the reasons we were hit. Then, to compound matters, we went into Iraq based on faulty evidence that should have been triple checked, and we made things even worse by forcing democracy on a nation completely unprepared for it. We continue to support Israel, which isn't the best nation in the Middle East, but it's also far from innocent in it's own matters.

Socially, the last decade saw the rise of a cancerous McCarthy-esque Libertarian-lite group of the Republican party more coloquially known as the "Tea Party". Corporations are seen as people, and they've ensured that enough of their money is flowing through congress that everyone is either corrupt or powerless. As a nation, we picked up more than a little bit of xenophobia and Islamophobia from the attacks, which has been used by the aforementioned tea party along with dangerously violent rhetoric to foment a political scene that seems more to me like Congress pre-Civil War than anything that should exist now.

No one trusts: Scientists, Professors, Teachers, Experts, Reporters, Analysts, Common Knowledge
Everyone listens to: Pundits: Liberal, Conservative, Hate-mongering far-right

People are more willing to return to the gilded age than reform an institution that's been broken (Unions).

Honestly, the terrorists haven't killed us. But they put us into a decline. We can still pull out of it, but man. It's really, really hard to say they haven't won when the past decade is taken into account.

America: We've got a lot of problems, we can fix them, but a lot of people just don't give a fuck.

Guess that photo's more accurate than I really did want to consider, huh.