For We are Many

I've been thinking about what it means to be a geek lately. Unfortunately, there's a hint of truth to the idea that geek culture is one built on compulsive consumption. Games, movies, TV, comics: all the things that identify geek culture are shamelessly and actively exploited by groups that either never cared about the artistry of these media, or have been driven to forget what love they had. This is pretty fucking clear when you look at how many comic book movies have been scheduled and how they've been handled. All of that shit is a big part of our social presence, but I feel like its too easy to assume these things are what make us geeks. They fucking aren't.

Geek culture isn't about Captain America or Batman or Warcraft; its about loving something so much you involve yourself with it. That's a weird thing to say, but bare with me. Geeks aren't just known for playing games and watching movies, we're known for dressing up as those people, writing our own fiction in those worlds, and relentlessly deconstructing and examining seemingly random aspects of those stories. That last one is important because it really is the bit that unifies us. The tricky part is that isn't some random expression of appreciation for a specific genre or medium, that's a personality trait. Geeks can and do geek out over anything they're into. It's not about what you obsess over, its about the passion. Foodies are geeks, ask them about their favorite food and tell me it doesn't feel exactly like talking to a LARPer about their character. The same is true about people who're really into politics, folks who get weird about sports, and pretty much anybody who enjoys their job after ten years.

The reason I'm all fuckered about this is that I've been dragged (largely through my own shitty, comment-reading habits) into some of the more aggressive discussions about how we're all evil, or stupid, or bigoted. I really hope I don't have to point out how fucking absurd that is. The problem is that we are really, really easily led. Once the mode of exploitation is determined (comics, games, and movies for many of us) the immediately popular aspects of that mode are flogged well past the point of meaninglessness. It happened with Batman, it happened with Final Fantasy, and it happened with politics. The trouble arises from the fact that when huge portions of your obsession have been highjacked and refined to the least common denominator for easy marketing; you get defensive about weird things, you stop thinking about what you really believe.

I don't know how we're going to get away from that, its a little too easy to capitalize and monopolize on people's obsessions. But I do know that we can't really afford to be complicit in our own exploitation anymore. So I don't know, boycott EA games, or MCU movies, or whatever evil you feel like you can do without. Better yet, try to create something of your own for other geeks to cling to. Foodies, sports nuts, Gamers; we aren't really different groups, we are one people with many passions.

Fuck You, Don't Pay Me

So here's a weird thing; I don't like getting paid. Not for my labor, not for goods, not at fucking all. Handling money in general bothers the fuck out of me. I've thought a great deal about why this is and how it happened that the absolute basis of our society came to repulse me. I'm not entirely sure how this state of affairs came about but I do have some reasons.

The main reason, I think, is that being paid to do a thing manipulates the nature of that thing. I'm no longer doing a thing because I want to or because I enjoy it, I'm doing it because I've been bought. At least rented. Now, this is probably some deep-seated fuckery from the circumstances of my rearing or whatever, but that doesn't make it less of a problem. Its to the point that if someone offers to pay me for say, my fucking delicious homemade molasses bacon, I not only don't want to give them any more, but I don't even want to make it anymore. Because clearly this person doesn't appreciate the act of love and attempt at comradery represented by my bacon, and if they don't then what's the fucking point. By offering to pay me it takes a fun, tasty offering of friendship and reduces it, and thus me and my friendship, to a commodity.

That's kind of the rub here, getting paid makes me feel cheap. I don't really value my own survival for its own sake. The things I do are done for earnest companionship, shared and personal joy and, fuck forbid, because I genuinely believe in what's being done. Getting monetarily remunerated just takes all of those great, ephemeral joys and tries to reduce them to a grubby, coke-stained stack of bills. Or worse, a digital means of survival that can only exist theoretically for me. It's saying that yeah, what I do is great and all, but you'd rather wave me away with money than allow a connection to form.

I fully recognize my unacceptable luck at having my needs accounted for, I don't deny for a second that this is a problem evoked only from a position of plenty. Unfortunately, my marketable skills consist of small batch baconry and the ability to swear on the internet, so my prospects are slim on my own. And considering my little neurosis gets worse the more abject my poverty and completely predates my current relative comfort I have, I would be fucked without my goddamn amazing wifemonster. At the same time, I think it says something absolutely disgusting about our culture when the knee jerk response to an attempt at brotherhood or an exercise in delight that results in a physical object, is "Here's some money so you'll keep doing that for me."

Thank You Jeremy

Just this today. Brian and I talk about this shit... just entirely too much. We're creatives at heart, and this is a topic that we grind on even more at home then we do on here. I've had this exact argument in various states with varying degrees of success and I wish with all of my heart that I had ever managed the clarity and passion Jeremy brings to this rant. We here at Kinda Whatevs are once again in your debt sir. Now if you'll excuse me I need to see if I'll ever finish my shitty little story.

Athletics, Advertising and Apathetic Naming Conventions

So there was the SuperThing yesterday that everybody and their dog got their dicks hard about. My apathy resounds on that specific front. I don't particularly care that a bunch of grown men got together to try and kill each other in tight pants, or that an obscene number of people chose to live vicariously through strangers to forget the unyielding, soulless monotony of their existence. I don't even really care that the standard response I receive when I tell people I'm not a "sports guy" is a cross between sneering derision and knee jerk hostility. You know what I do care about? Fucking Katy Perry's Halftime performance. Or better yet, did you see that one commercial that cost as much as the GDP of Jamaica?

There's a point here I promise. See I'm not alone in not being big on watching sports, lots of people abstain from the sportitude, the unrepresented population here seems to be those of us who don't think sports are particularly special. Its not that I don't think that what they do is impressive to some extent, its that the physical talent athletes demonstrate has more to do with the fact that they've spent their whole fucking lives pretty much just playing a game than any thing else. There is talent involved certainly, hell they even serve a degree of social good. Sports brings communities together and that is definitely a net gain. The issue that arises for me is that while I don't have a problem with people who enjoy sports I also don't really care about all of the shit that surrounds sports culture. Its fucked up that that one guy ran a dog fighting ring or whatever, but no more fucked up than the fact that that happens anyway. I find it sickening that that dude beat the fuck out of his wife, just like it is when anyone does it.

"Oh", you may well find yourself saying, "but they're role-models, Children look up to them, so what they do matters more". First, no; they're grown men who get carte blanche because they run real fast and can take the rock to the goal or whatever. Second, children look up to them because they make a shit ton of money for playing the same games they play after school. Children aren't great at recognizing their best interests, that what parents are supposed to be for. Children would also look up to somebody who got rich from eating cake, little fuckers love cake.

Athletes can be fucked up and sports people weird me, but what is worse to me is the people who make a big deal out of demonizing them and talking about how they don't watch the sportsing, and then in the same breath start a dissertation on SuperThing ads and halftime shows. Fuck those people, they are the worst violators of the "if you don't like it, don't look" rule. These are the same class of fuckheads who watch reality shows ironically. They are on par with anorexics bitching about how unhealthy fat people are, sure they aren't fat but they're just as unhealthy and weird about food. Hell, events like the SuperThing make as much money off of random assholes tuning into the commercials as they do from asses in seats. I don't care for sports, so when the SuperThing or the Series of the World (in very small considerations of what "world" means) is on, I fucking do something else. None of that something involves even tangentially the event in question. My thinking is that if enough of us just don't bother at all maybe they'll finally fucking go away. It worked on the Jocks in highschool, maybe I'll get lucky.

CAW CAW BANG! ...Oh Fuck He's Dead

We talk about remakes and reboots just... entirely too much. Today's post isn't going to be about how remakes are all fucked up (though they often are), or reboots are money-grubbing bullshit (though they often are). No today I'm going direct reference. Relativity is doing a remake of The Crow. I fucking loved The Crow, both the comic and the first movie. That said, seriously, don't fucking do that.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the our little tale of woe; Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee's son, straight up fucking died in making The Crow. When your movie kills one of the ridiculously rare instances of a second generation fucking legend you need to pack up and go home. They didn't, they made three more movies and a shitty T.V. show, but that was at best in bad taste. I totally understand that its a nifty concept, I intimately appreciate that The Crow had a huge impact on a certain population, like me. However, The Crow is a pretty self contained story about loss and pain, that does extrapolate out pretty well but that doesn't require the bludgeoning of a deeply intimate story, especially after the first cinematic attempt fucking killed your headliner.

The Crow is essentially about a dude who comes back from the dead to inflict his grief on the people who murdered him and his SO. There are so many fucking ways to do that story without piggybacking the comic or disrespecting Brandon Lee's death. Find one and do that if you wanna make a movie. 

Okay, so I lied, this is all about how how fucked up remakes are and how the film industry is a soulless, money-grubbing fuckscape. Sorry for the deception.

SPAAAAAAAAACEEEEEE! I'mma Go To Space.

Brian and I have expressed our general approval of scientific progress on several occasions around these parts. One of our biggest interests along those lines is space travel. The exploration of planets outside our own, the possible revelations waiting for us in the Deep Black, its the stuff nerd boners are made of. I think most people are probably on board with us on this, space is exciting, I mean seriously, kids wanting to grow up to be astronauts is cliche` common. So why aren't we out there? Why has the biggest intellectual resource for space exploration been whittled down to a bunch of politicians grumbling at each other?

The most common excuse I've seen sited in regards to why we shouldn't bother, you know, exploring the universe, is that it isn't a worthwhile expense. There are no words to express how absolutely, fundamentally fucking wrong that is, nor am I possessed of the patience to describe how many levels this argument fucks up on. Of course, that's never stopped me from trying before and its certainly not going to stop me here.

Point 1: Ugh, Fuck You. We live in a world where economic worth is entirely the product of (usually enforced) scarcity and perceived advantage. If the powers that be wanted the money made available it would be.

Point 2: You know what? Fuck you some more. Even if we're buying into the "market factors" bullshit as a stumbling block to scientific progress, that progress is its own reward. There is no such thing as a "worthless" scientific discovery. Even the weird penis ratio studies that we keep throwing money at (but exploring the infinite bounty of space is just not worth it) tell us things about the human body, psychology, how hormones do and don't effect development. These studies are functionally one step below naval gazing but they still inform us of new things, confirm or deny old things, and lead us to further inquiry. Failure to recognize the value of scientific progress to the level that denies space exploration represents a complete failure as a modern human.

Point 3: Na uh! Lets talk about the fact of extra terrestrial life. Its out there. See the period? There is no room for argument on that subject. I'm not saying that little grey men abduct red necks for sodomy experiments. I am saying that the universe is unimaginably vast, assuming that we are unique in that universe represents a degree of hubris that ought to be terminal. Absolutely any contact with extraterrestrial life would explode the limits of modern science, open up entire new fields of inquiry on every front, and give us opportunities we can't even fully conceive of. Even if that life develops exactly as we have, that says so very much about how reality works its staggering.

Point 4: Bite Me. Let's give the nay sayers as much charity as I can bare. If the questions to be answered mean nothing. If the progress to be made is meaningless. If science for science sake is of no value to their tiny, malformed brains. Even if all of that is true, space is just fucking full of resources. There are compounds found in asteroids that can't be found anywhere on earth. There are exoplanets that rain fucking diamond, carbon arrangements that can't occur naturally on our planet. Asteroids litter our solar system just fucking lousy with raw material begging to be mined. From an economic perspective even the colossal expenditures involved in space flight can just be passed onto consumers as our fears of finite resources fade ever farther away. sure it means we can't be gutted as badly for the resources themselves, but the cost of acquisition would more than cover it if they're really insistent about being an avaricious cuntbag about it.

So next time you read a newsfeed about some senator or wrong-heaed media mouthpiece bitching about how much NASA is costing us and how worthless space programs are, take a minute to write them. Tell them what an ignorant, shortsighted shit-licker they are. I suppose you could be more politic about it than that, but I don't see the point in mincing words with the enemy.

A Bad Policy

I hate it when people try to talk about things in terms of black and white. It is a very rare that something will ever be so clear cut that there is never any mitigating circumstance that might have an effect on outcome. Let me give you an example that happened to me a while ago, but has stayed with me.

I once had a job working for a company that had a high level management person come in to talk to us about an "incident". The company I was working for was an event planning group that worked for a big corporation, we'll call them Macrohard, back when they were releasing the Wall 8 OS. In our contract we had a requirement of at least a 30 minute delay between events in rooms so that we could clean them up and reorganize seating as was usually required. This seemed like a clear cut agreement and while I worked there it had never been broken until this point. We had to switch a room from circular tables to theater style seating for round about 350 people in 15 minutes. This would only be doable if we got all of our staff to work on it at the same time. As this was against the terms stipulated in the contract, and since we had other events happening in that day so we wouldn't have had the manpower, my boss had words with the people who set up the schedule.

A few days later, said corporate manager showed up to tell us that we fucked up. We should have done this the way the client had wanted, and that this might end up costing us a contract. He said, and I quote, "I don't believe in a grey world in the service industry. The service industry is black and white. You either get it done, or you don't." This boggled my mind. They broke a contract and it was somehow our fault. What the fuck! I quit fairly soon after that, along with at least five other people.

I will admit, we didn't get the job done, but it was because they asked us to do something impossible with our (then) current staffing. The corporate manager kept telling us about stories in which he had bent over backwards to help clients in the hotel industry when he worked in it, and how this was to be our goal. To do what the clients ask us to do, regardless of how unfeasible, legal, or appropriate the whole situation was. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but people got fired over this. One of them was my manager who was just trying to make sure that our contract was held up. Its ridiculous. I would be willing to bet that if this was a smaller client, the corporate office wouldn't have cared as much.

I understand why corporations take this route. The main goal of a corporation is to maximize profit, and not doing so is a failure in that goal. Not being flexible/understanding to at least some degree though hurts the people who work for you, which seems like a self destructive behavior. Seeing the world via this black and white only perspective limits your options, which could very well doom a company, especially in today's economy. That company I worked for? Lost most of their employees over this (several people quit due to not liking the management's decisions) and no longer has the contract they fucked themselves so hard to maintain.

Gygax is My Spirit Animal

I'm late, I know. I'm bad at things and my heart is made of smelly cheese. Rather than self-flagellate over my established failings in punctuality I'm going to ramble about gaming some more.

I've written about my possibly unhealthy obsession with pen and paper gaming before, and none of that has changed. I fucking love tabletop gaming, rolling dice might as well be an aphrodisiac. That said some aspects do run afoul of my pickier sensibilities from time to time. As I've mentioned before, I game for the high degree of customization and adaptability available in a pen and paper situation. I dig the complexity of options and versatility of interactions; which makes it troublesome to me how many systems are trying so hard to become video games. When a system goes from versatile feats based on the development of skills and abilities to a series of powers or maneuvers dependent on level I see a problem. I will admit that its largely an issue of nuance but its a little difference that matters. One option encourages the growth and development of an interesting and at least relatively unique character and the other rewards you for your numbers going up by making your numbers go up.

I'm probably being a bit of a fuddy-duddy about this but I don't really care. I understand that there are perceived market factors in play, the new generations of gamers like a simplified system or whatever. I understand the desire to streamline what can be kind of ridiculously convoluted systems. Seriously, just the licensed books for D&D 3.5 numbers in the high sixties. But the effort to streamline also seems to act as a restrictive measure on the flexibility of the system. While I understand that nobody, especially me, wants to pay a thousand bucks to get a nice, relatively complete set of books; the methods used to clarify the system also demand a higher degree of specificity in the use of power. Classes that once stood as starting points in the development of a character and bases for roleplay options have started shifting into the MMO vernacular. You don't talk about the paladin in terms of her dedication and righteousness, you talk about her capacity as a tank and the control value of her powers. We don't talk about the sorcerer in terms of what his innate connection to magic does to his mind or what his draconic heritage means for his future, we talk about his DPS. I'm not saying the trend in the new systems makes this kind of roleplay impossible, but it is so much easier to ignore the story-potential of a character when more and more the only thing we're given rules for is how that character is equipped to kill shit. I know I'm picking on D&D pretty hard, and they are by no means the only perpetrators, but I feel like they lead the way, I mean D&D has been The Big Name in tabletop for a lot of years.

I feel like an old man yelling at these damn kids for their newfangled power cards and skilltrees, why back in my day you had to pass a tumble check just to get your armor on or whatever. I'm not saying that there aren't any good things to be had from the new breed (13th age has some interesting showings in the mechanics department) but I'm always left wanting more, and not in a good way. Give me some real skills, give me a chance to love my character for more than their ability to one shot a group of mooks, for fucks sake give me more control over my character than I'm liable to find in a Bioware game and we can talk. Until then I can't see myself spending money on, much less running, the new wave. I can't imagine I represent much of a loss in their profits but that's fine, I'm plenty capable of enjoying myself with some 3rd ed D&D or homebrew oWoD. Maybe I'm not alone. Hopefully, I'm not alone. If so, good luck out there. I hope to see you all at the table someday.

Adventures in Capitalism

As Eshi pointed out in his post yesterday, we have had some troubles getting internet in the new place. Before we moved here we had talked to our internet provider and got them to switch our coverage to the new place and we would originally just have been without internet for a couple of days. That's not so bad. We could use the time away to do productive things like unpack and get setup in the new place. When the day came that we were supposed to get internet the guy came from the internet company and told us two things, that they were not here for us, but our neighbor,  that they would be with us the next day, and that they would need to lay cable for us to get internet because the place wasn't wired up for it. Two or three days tops though, annoying, but not a deal breaker. It ended up in the end taking two weeks because they didn't submit the work order and they didn't provide us with any information that we could use to follow up the order with.

I know, I know: First world problems, but it is something that is a symptom of a larger problem. Two weeks without internet kinda sucked, but it wasn't as soul destroying as I thought it would be. The worst part about it was that we had no other choice. Here in Seattle you have basically two choices of internet providers if you don't live in a swanky apartment complex or Condo, Comcast or Century Link. Neither of these companies scores well on yelp, and both have some very shitty policies when it comes to how they treat customers. They are always late to appointments, they charge a lot for services, and they both support anti-net neutrality bills.

We have zero other options.

Capitalism is great on paper. Companies compete, forcing themselves to innovate, charge competitively, and provide good customer service. This is great for the consumer (and for encouraging progress), but kinda crappy for the companies. In this system companies have to spend money on R&D, constantly keep fresh new ideas coming, and the constant competition forces them to constantly reevaluate situations in order for them to survive. Companies fail on a regular basis because they fail the balancing act of how much money to spend to make the most money. This can be stressful, so companies try to do things like completely erase competition in order to not have to do it. When this happens the winner can set prices to whatever they want, stop innovating because there is no need, and treat employees and customers badly because who else are they going to go to? Nobody, that's who. They are the only game in town. This is shitty. Its an example of winning at the expense of others, and as we have discussed before, that's fucking bad.

This is why anti-trust laws exist. They say that people cannot have a monopoly in an industry because its terrible for the economy and more importantly, the people. Competition is healthy because it forces companies to act better towards the countries they reside in and in turn, the consumers who buy from them. Its also illegal for companies to collude and carve out markets for themselves and just not compete with each other, but its hard to prove so companies still do it. A perfect example of this is from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver when talking about Comcast and Time Warner and their collusion. Watch the clip here. Also, if you have not seen the series, watch it. John Oliver is hilarious, and he doesn't need to pull punches like he did on The Daily Show.

Companies try to do whatever they can to eliminate competition and while that is good for them, it fucks people over. The internet business is only one example of where this happens, and this came to light when we decided to try to find internet from another company. We have two to choose from, and they are both terrible. Access to the internet is a human right, according to the UN, but companies can still get away with being shitty when it comes to providing it because there is no real competition. Sure we have two choices, but neither are any good, and because they don't need to compete very hard they don't need to provide a good service.

This stagnation also means that there is no innovation or drive to produce something better. The US is 31st in the world when it comes to internet speeds. 31st! We are behind countries like Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, and Uruguay. It is also way more expensive here than in any of the countries higher than us in speed. This is all because we don't have a choice in the matter. There are 3-4 major internet companies and they are the only place to get it from. Competition is something that keeps economies from stagnating. I don't know how to fix this problem other than instituting harsher regulations on companies that collude but it is a hard thing to prove in court.