This is far from a new game — but I don’t care. A lot has been said outlining the positive aspects of this game, so I’ll spare you the fanboi drool. Instead, I’ll go a different way.
Old though it is (by internet standards), Skyrim is still an oft-talked about title, and watching my lover play it today, I simply could not delay this rant any longer.
“Lets dumb it down to appeal to a dumber audience!” – Bethesda
Skyrim is so pretty. And so fucking lame.
“Back in my day“, you could wear cloths under your armor and a cloak on top of that.
Instead of one ring, you could wear a ring for every thumb you proudly owned.
Skirts did not automatically transform into pants simply because you were playing a male, and women were allowed to wear pants.
Weapons could actually get worn down by careless use.
Legendary items could be sold for the ludicrous amounts one would expect.
Spells could be creatively customized.
Fast-travel was considered too unrealistic and as such not allowed unless you hired transportation.
Invisible walls were unheard of.
Enemies did not level with you, so you knew better than to rumble with the big dogs on day 1.
If you wanted to, you could permanently kill quest-critical characters (even gods!) thereby actually breaking free of the conventional restraints of the game.
There were no throw-away NPCs with a single line of dialogue — everyone had a story. You could create spells to fucking FLY!
Then I played Fallout: New Vegas, another Bethesda game, and my desire for immersion was truly realized.
You had to eat!
You had to sleep!
You had to hydrate!
In other words, those countless items of food actually MEANT SOMETHING.
But then Skyrim happened and failed to adopt any of these (for me) vital features that had been built up over the years.
In other words, I see Skyrim as the opposite of innovative progress.
Skyrim is very pretty. It has all the tools for a truly flawless game hidden within its code.
And it fails to utilize them to perfection.
So close. Yet so SO far, that it damn near breaks the whole damn game for me!
I know I’m picky. And thats not a bad thing: I demand the best because I care.
Because if you aren’t “picky” about the things you have passion for, what the fuck is the point!?
Lots of police-on-civilian violence in the news coming from within the USA recently. I thought I’d share my Russian version of things.
My mother, my little brother and I were living in Vladivostok, Siberia. We had just gotten up to our apartment, through the locked exterior door, up the key-activated elevator, and past the locking hallway door of our floor as well. We walked up to our steel barricade of a personal door and my mother began punching in the code. Between carrying bags of groceries in one hand and my little brother in the other (I have no idea what I was carrying), she still managed to get the massively heavy door to swing open, as she did every day, then proceeded to unlock the wooden interior door.
Only a hundred or so doors to go!
Maybe by now you have noticed two things.
1. We must have been fairly well-off to have had all this security.
and
2. Holy shit, that is a lot of security for a crummy two-bedroom apartment in a part of town where serial murderers were a monthly occurrence!
Just the other week, a woman was strangled to death with her leggings in one of our building’s elevators. Apparently, the current serial rapist was a ‘leggings fetishist’, so women were advised not to wear any lest they tempt him with their womanly wiles.
SO asking for it
At this point, stumbling into our ‘stylishly undersized’ apartment, she went about prioritizing between the placement of her children and the placement of the groceries. That is when the alarm went off.
Spinning about, my mother rushed to the door — it had stayed ajar too long and triggered the siren.
Fumbling with her keys she yelled (over the noise) for me to watch my little brother as she rushed through the door to get the land-lady down the hall to turn off the alarm, closing both home doors behind her.
The alarm soon died and I went back to putting away the food. My attention was sparked, however, when I heard a thump against our door. Walking back over to it, I found my little brother standing there, looking at it with his hand in his mouth — he had heard it too.
I stood next to him, a few feet away from the door, staring at the flimsy but pretty inside door. There were then a series of small popping explosions and the metal exterior door came crashing inward, taking the wooden one with it.
Six men in military camouflage gear, wearing helmets and ski masks, wielding automatic rifles and strapped with grenades, piled into our living room.
Welcome to adulthood! I think puberty just hit all at once!
To put this surreal situation another way, I just had the SPETSNAZ breach my steel front door with explosives and point their AK-47s at me and my 2 year old brother while screaming at us to identify ourselves. I was 10, starting down the barrel of (into the barrel of?) a rifle. I think its right around then that I came to terms with the fear of death – saving my little brother was more important than worrying about mortality.
Everything seemed to slow down and it appeared to me that I had all the time in the world to decide what to do (I later learned that this is called an ‘adrenaline rush’ and can take years to master willingly in stressful situations).
Having had this ‘time’ to consider, I pulled my brother behind me, puffed out my chest, and answered that ‘we live here’.
The lead-man hesitated and pulled down his mask without lowering his rifle.
“What did you say, boy?” he asked.
“WE LIVE HERE,” I repeated, matter-of-factly. The strangest sort of calm had come over me and it seemed to stun this soldier.
This isn’t actually funny. Brazilian cops are paid to beat street urchins to death.
Why soldiers were responding to a police alarm in the first place, I still do not know. Maybe SWAT was occupied elsewhere. Maybe the bribes were better working street. Maybe they were just passing through.
Whatever the case, at this point, my mother rushed in swearing and screaming apologies, shoving past the armed men as she threw literally handfuls of money at each of them (“for their trouble”) before finally getting to the point-man and handing him the rest of the considerable amount of cash she had with her.
As they happily filed out, the leader sternly reminded her to promptly keep her (detached) door closed at all times to avoid this in the future.
Now, imagine if she did not have a lot of money. Or that the SPETSNAZ man didn’t hesitate to blow away some ten and two year old professional burglars/terrorists. Or that we weren’t well-off by their standards. We would have been entirely at their mercy (as opposed to just being able to bargain for it).
That is the situation for 99% of the people on the planet who have to deal with overzealous police-departments. Instead of sending well-manner police officers, or — I don’t know — just a regularly lethal strike team, they might send FUCKING SOLDIERS.
Don’t we all feel safer?
“It is the job of the police to protect the people, and the job of the military to fight the enemies of the state. When the military are the police, the people tend to become the enemies of the state.”
(No doubt) in response to my SCATHING criticism of Richard Dawkins’ sexist remarks, he recently made a speech not only openly supporting Feminism (likely intended as a direct apology to me) but also hilariously dismissing the entire Men’s Rights Movement and its overbearing misogyny.
BEHOLD!!!
Another video blog, because I just KNOW you can’t get enough of my beautiful russian mug!
This one is on sexism in the (prominent) atheist community (not just the dipshits on youtube).
Welcome to Middle-Earth, weary fantasy-lover!
You have the option of following the epic tale of a heroic white guy (of varying height) as he treks around vanquishing evil, dark-skinned barbarians! If you want to watch (or play) a woman who isn’t given the smurfette treatment, too fucking bad! If you want to be a guy who isn’t white as snow and pure as rain – “we don’t like yer kind ’round hurr!”
Sad-face
Ah yes Mister Hero, and should the forces of ‘darkness’ unite against your ‘heroism’, fear not, for the pure-races will be preserved by the Deus Ex Machina of an invincible army of green white-dude ghosts! Afterall, what could be more heroic than a god-moding cheat code?
But don’t the orcs eat people, oh wise-and-mighty Aleksandr the Great(est)?
Why yes, my curious Judeo-Christian friends! In the same way that I’m sure all black janitors are magic.
Okay, seriously, what is my point?
Why, allow me to answer you, dear hypothetical reader!
Because while this type of review is not my usual fare, I feel it is incumbent upon me(as a geek) to address this widely acclaimed work of horseshit that has been methodically spreading itself around popular culture like some over-hyped viral outbreak.
Because I was sick and tired of Lord of the Rings by the time the second movie came out (thats Two Towers, not that desiccated Hobbit story arc). Yes, I’ve read the books. No I didn’t like them either but holy SHIT did the racism not sink in until you put that crap on screen!
I’m not just being hyperbolic! If you take a step away from what orcs (every single one, apparently) do, and just look at it in terms of racial issues, why WOULDN’T they rebel against their Caucasian overlords? Orcs are pushed unto a volcanic reservation (and still hunted for sport) and treated like utter monsters by every single ‘goodly’ person without exception. There are apparently NO redeeming qualities to orcs at all. Shit, even the evil drow of better fantasy series have their outliers! (one outcast drow being the moral hero of several series). More than that, all of the ‘civilized’ societies of Middle-Earth have been living in relatively close proximity for ages and yet remain completely segregated even from each other. Which begs the question: What…happened? Was there some great ‘purge’ of half-breeds? Some ‘final solution’ that all the pure-bloods agreed upon? It seems to me that Sauron, is in fact the Abe Lincoln liberator of the orcs (we just happen to be sitting on the Confederate side of history).
The Grand White Wizard leads the charge against the forces of darkness!
My point is, I really don’t give a fuck if Tolkien came up with the archetypal human/elf/dwarf narrative that is still used today by better fantasy writers (he didn’t). On top of the seriously problematic racial overtones, one has to notice the utter lack of notabe female heroes. Tolkien established an oppressive gender heirarchy in his fantasy world for purely peripheral reasons (as opposed to Game of Thrones, for example, which actively explores these issues ad nauseam).
If you can’t turn a critical eye to the blatant failings of your preferred entertainment genre, you are failing your own sensibilities while openly propagating rather jarring racial (nevermind gender) stereotypes for the sake of cheap (and very white) thrills.
This is a video blog. In other words, instead of ranting in writing I just did it at the camera.
Not sure why I had such trouble with my English today, but perhaps this is coherent enough.
This is on the Abrahamic God, Rape, Sexism, Feminism, Darwinism, and Atheism. Specifically, addressing the religious argument that without gawd, rape is permissible. I argue to the contrary from a secular humanist perspective.
Fight Club is a Feminist film.
Hear me out. These are not my words, but of another feminist. Apparently, because the real thing the men in Fight Club rile against is the established patriarchal order, it is in fact, a feminist film (for dude-bros).
“Huh”, said I.
Bob, (testicle-less though he may be) is clearly very in touch with his emotions, and this is not seen as a bad thing, but surely that alone does not make it a ‘feminist’ film. In the same way the overt flirtation the film has with the homoerotic aspects of male sexuality does not really make it pro-LBGT, right?
(Okay so that was a crap joke…in the same way that 300 was TOTALLY not homoerotic).
Soak in the manliness!
Even as I enjoyed the nuances of the film’s dichotomy, the way the sole female character was treated by the males in the film always troubled me.
They clearly resented being “a generation raised by women”.
Fight Club itself is exclusionary to women (as a combat instructor, that’s some serious — no sarcasm — BULLSHIT right there).
Further, the male ‘protagonists’ state that they, “don’t think another woman is what [they] need”.
Everything Eva Green touches, no matter how shitty, turns into Gold. No discussion.
Fight Club is usually seen as a schizophrenic thriller — a single tear-drop away from an MRA manifesto — especially since for the majority of the film, the main character fixates on openly hating the sole female lead of the movie (while simultaneously sexually fixating on her).
However, misogynistic as the male characters may be, the point of the film clearly illustrates the hatred/obsession with women as the focal point of the film; and when you think about it, that is some surprisingly honest shit from such a popular piece of cinema.
That view alone, intentional or not, makes this a film worth taking a second look at — difficult though it may be to wade through the sexism — in order to see the misguided angst of the men under the patriarchal system they, themselves erected from their own twisted and confused, perspective.
I had just dropped off my lover for a train ride and was driving back when a certain sign in a hair-cutter’s caught my eye: “Men & Kids $10“.
This caused me to pause last time I saw the sign a few months back, but this time I pulled right over and swaggered my dashing ass inside.
Allow me to paint you a picture:
I was wearing my training gear, which is comprised of ACU (army combat uniform) pants, desert boots, and a black instructor’s t-shirt. I have short hair and a neatly trimmed goatee.
Artist’s rendition: They say you are what you eat, but I don’t remember eating a fucking legend!
The two women inside quickly whispered to each other (presumably regarding who will claim the client) and then the taller one with long, curly, black hair walked over — all smiles.
“I have a question about the sign outside,” I cheerfully begin.
She nodded excitedly and told me that all men’s haircuts are $10.
“So what if a man has long, flowing, beautiful hair?” I ask, politely.
Still excitedly, she firmly states, “Doesn’t matter!” an expression of overt pride on her face.
“I see,” says I, “Is that not extremely sexist? You know, against women?”
Her eyes widen in surprise and her mouth opens and closes twice before she responds that women tend to have ‘longer hair’.
“I know,” I cut in, “but you just stated that a man’s style does not matter, no matter how long the hair, and I am not talking about getting a perm.”
I find your lack of sisterhood disturbing.
Her eyes dart from side to side and her compatriot sweeping the floor had stopped to stare at us in awkward silence.
“Well, we are all girls here,” she manages.
“Indeed,” I agree, “Is that not almost MORE perverse, ‘Uncle Tom’ style?”
As she continued to mutter and stutter incoherently in complete shock, I realize there will be no more justifications forthcoming, so I bid her good-day and take my leave.
“Come again!” she manages.
“Not likely,” I call back before the door swings shut behind me.
Visit “Short Kuts” at 3225 I-70 Business Loop in Clifton Colorado. Or better yet…DON’T.
I own rats. Or more specifically; I have furry kids. Rats have an unjustly designed reputation among humans. The myth of them spreading disease is vastly exaggerated. The Bubonic Plague, for instance, was spread by Mongol tribes who sent rats and cats infected with fleas to Europe on trade ships in the first recorded ‘biological attack‘. These flees were then transferred from the felines and the rodents to the unwashed European masses resulting in the ‘Black Death’. And yet, I do not see cats being euthanized for their part in that sordid history (of which they had no control over anyway). Here is a simplistic history lesson for your kids (or you), courtesy of the dreaded Disney Corporation:
To those they bond with, rats are affectionate and loyal to a fault. They are independent like cats, and can eat (almost) anything you do, thus making them very low-hassle pets. They are also very loving, like dogs, and greatly enjoy to cuddle or riding on their human’s shoulder. Our rats have free-range of the common-area of our home, since it is our firm belief that keeping an animal (human or otherwise) confined to a cage for the majority of its existence will drive it insane and (unsurprisingly) turn it hostile to its captors. This puts me not only in the minority of animal owners, but also in the minority of rat owners. Double trouble! Our rats chase our cat and ferrets around and play with them as they would with another rat from their own pack. They have adopted and have been adopted by all the inhabitants of our home (we have two rats, two ferrets, and a cat). Like ferrets, rats are social creatures, so it is good to have one other of their species for them to cuddle with when you aren’t around.
They just want to cuddle! (and of course, feast on your cat’s food)
Allow me to back up. I recently found a rat-lover’s group on facebook and enthusiastically joined, only to discover that they have strict rules regarding posting other animals getting along with rats because ‘its a dangerous example’. I took particular offense to this because of the strong friendship between my wife’s cat and my familiar, Katirina.
Katirina the Great (rat) cuddling with her favorite friend, Hannibal the Cannibal (cat)
This bewildering denial of something I would have imagined rat owners would be proud to advertise aside, they also all took a firm stand against allowing their animal companions to free-range. This REALLY pissed me right the hell off, and I asserted that: 1. Animals take after their humans, so if their animals could not be made to get along and see each other as family, they the humans, are SHITTY parents. and 2. A rat (or any animal) needs to be comfortable with its human and other animal housemates as well as its environment before it can be taught right from wrong (for instance, litter-box training or learning that it is not ok to chew on electric cords). This is impossible, if they are confined to a cage for 90% of their existence unless some giant mammal occasionally feels like reaching in and petting on them. That is clearly a terrible existence for any creature, and unsurprisingly, these type of rat owners have overwhelmingly failed to truly bond with their companions. In short, I called all of these rat-bastards terrible people, and expressed honest sympathy for their captive animals. One retort I received challenged that ‘they are better off in a cage than dead on the street or being fed to a snake’. No shit. Of course, if your best argument is that the existence you provide them is slightly better than death, then you’ve only endeavored to make my point for me.
The Family, before our ferratty kids joined it. (mom is holding the camera)
However, like with caring for any animal, there are hardships. One thing I can say to the negative about taking care of rats is their very short lifespan (3-5 years). It is very difficult when an animal familiar you have bonded with dies of old age or health complications after only such a short time together. Additionally, be prepared for the development of possible tumors if you are caring enough to rescue them from being fed to snakes by buying them off a breeder. Since those fucked up people tend to inbreed the poor creatures, it creates health problems, specifically with the mammary tumors of female rats. But a good veterinarian can give your beloved animal many more months to live even as you give them a life worth living.
Morgan Le Fay recovering, after Doctor Tanja successfully removed her tumor.
Older rats are prone to strokes but can often recover very quickly. Regardless, your older companion will require a lot of personal care to make her final days as dignified and peaceful as possible. Feed her how you can, keep her clean, and keep her close. Before Katirina and Morgan passed away, we adopted a baby rat named Anniebel so that our old girls could pass on what they learned about living with people to their little sister. After they died, and Annie grew a bit, we decided to try breeding her (a fancy rat) with a Dumbo rat (to avoid the inbreeding issues).
Anniebel all preggers!
She gave us a litter of two, beautiful baby boys. Zechs Marquise and Dorian Gray. A group of rats is called ‘a mischief’, so to be more accurate, Annie gave birth to a mischief of two!
When they are happy, they will ‘brux’ (grind) their teeth together to tell you they are content. When they get REALLY happy, their bruxing makes their eyes bobble!!
We then decided to try getting a pair of ferrets, contrary to all the online warnings about how ruthlessly cruel ferrets can be to rats. Of course, by then, we were taking these terrified pearls of ‘wisdom’ with a grain of salt since we received much the same untrue advice about cats and rats living together. Our cat Hannibal loves nothing more than to be protective of his rattie friends (even if they do chase him around occasionally). So baby ferrets we got, named Marcus Antonius and Vicious Vorenus. Anniebel quickly took to putting them in their place, teaching the ferrets what was okay and what was off-limits. She was a spunky mom, to be sure!
“Good ferret!This is okay.”
I would like to close up by saying that rats are beautiful, empathic creatures, and people who take the time to look past their own medieval prejudices will be privileged indeed to have a rattie companion in their life. Rats, when made a free-ranging part of the family, can get along with any other animal; provided you are patient and willing to help all the animals learn that you love each and every one of them all the more when they love each other. And then? Then they will love you right back.
Its not just a movie.
Maleficent is proof-positive that fantastic children’s cartoons like Wreck It Ralph and Frozen out of the Disney workshop are not an accident but part of an empowering new direction for the studio and by extension, Hollywood.
The movie was better than I could have hoped (and I hoped for a lot), free from all the mandatory (old) Disney sappiness and did not even falter in the third act, as too many otherwise great films too often do. I will NOT spoil anything about this film just yet as it is still out in theaters, but you owe it to yourself to see this (and if you happen to pick up any children on the way to the theater, bring them along).
The full review will be posted when the movie has had a chance to make the rounds. For now watch this trailer. Then go see it in theaters and support it with your money. Seriously. Its that good.
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