And the Whole of the Law Shall Be, an it Harm None, Do What Thou Wilt

I've always been fascinated by the interplay of morality and ethics, as anyone whose been with us a while could probably attest to. Its not really just those two things, but they provide an easy shortcut for what I tend to think of as Personal Good and Social Good, and demonstrate the tension between the two pretty fucking effectively.

Personal Good is your moral code, but its also your personal philosophy on life. How you choose to live and the reasons you make those choices. Social Good, to me, is a simultaneously simpler and more nuanced topic. As far as I'm concerned the purpose of society is to ensure the greatest joy possible to its constituents, there was once a time when it was a survival mechanism, but adherence to that model is a relic of a shitty tribal impulse that we deeply need to get the fuck over. Notice, "greatest joy possible to its constituents." Not as many as possible. All. The entire reason we band together in groups is to benefit as a fucking group. With that in mind I tend to consider things in terms of freedom to pursue joy. At which point I come quite quickly to the old Lockean maxim (though I hate to lean on a dead man's words), "Your right to swing your fist ends at the next man's face" (in some book, presumably by John Locke).

In terms of the Social Good, that is pretty much absolute to me. To phrase it another way, your right to act as you please is inversely proportional to the amount of harm it causes. Not some esoteric, "moral fiber" bullshit. Harm. Non-consensual, unnecessary physical or psychological damage to other living things. Non-consensual, meaning any party is either unwilling or unable to freely and intentionally participate. Unnecessary, meaning not required for the continuation of one's own existence; harvesting to eat (meat or vegetation, provided the entire process is humane), harming in reasonable self-defense, and doing harm to protect another are all either allowable or encouraged depending.

Now, obviously this is a hierarchy, but its a subjective one. For me the Social Good tends to win out, you've got to reign in your darker impulses (impulses that tend to get justified by the Personal Good) or you make the world a worse place for everybody. There's no reason for that, a little more effort and a little forethought opens up a lot of possibilities for beneficial cooperation. I get that that isn't how everyone looks at it, many people put Personal Good first, either because its an easier starting point and they don't examine the issue much, or because they make the decision that their own way is the superior way. Most of the time this isn't really a problem honestly. People are by and large vanilla enough that their way doesn't have enough of an impact generally to be terribly concerned about in the long run. Either because their thing is close enough to the Social Good that it doesn't matter or because they never get up the gumption to bother doing anything anti-social.

However, some people are poison, they don't just put themselves first, they seek to fuck others over. And that is where the question becomes interesting. These people are unequivocally cunts, the little tiny pieces of shit that get lodged in a cultures colon and rot it slowly to a suppurating cancer, and their stupid shit saw us through some of the nastiest periods in history. Asshole behavior makes society worse as a whole, but selfishness dramatically increases the rate of survival in adverse environments. So it gets passed down, held on to. Not by everybody, but by enough to demonstrate success and spread, like successful strategies do.

I find that whole interaction to be deeply intellectually engaging. Seeing the wheels of society turn on conflicting and complex cogs of community and cock-knockery, as heartbreaking as it is to watch swathes of the population slowly try to shit the world to death, its almost hypnotizing. But just because a behavior is successful, doesn't mean its worthy, and just because a thing is hypnotizing doesn't mean you should sit back and watch it happen.

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.

You Pass Butter

I binge watched Rick and Morty this weekend. Its goddamn amazing. I fucking love science fiction, and better yet if it doesn't fuck around on the philosophical bits. Rick and Morty comfortably rolls from questions of the futility of existence to the meaning and value of the self in an infinite multiverse, which it handles insanely fucking well.

Rick is raw pragmatism draped over an unmitigated id. He invents technology that allows him to travel between realities and he happily uses it to get space drugs. He shows an insight and forethought that is simultaneously brilliant and dismissive. Meanwhile Morty is intuitive and empathetic, if a little dumb. He acts as both a plot driver and a humanizing influence on Rick.

I know I'm being a little english lit, but this cartoon doesn't fuck around. It's worth deconstructing. That said it handles all of this shit with relentless humor and a brutal simplicity that I can't praise enough. Seriously, watch this fucking show.

The Rules

I've been thinking a lot lately about practical morality. I know normally I'm more an ethics guy, and I stand by my prioritizing ethics over morality. But the rules people live by are important and I think we can all benefit from discussing them. So here are mine, this list can and probably will grow as shit happens and points are inevitably made. Feel free to comment with your list or rules you find important that you think I missed. (Disclaimer: These rules are discussed in a metaphorical tone, Kinda Whatevs does not condone or support the doing of harm (no matter how appropriate) to people (no matter how deserving). Neither Kinda Whatevs or its representatives espouse the breaking of laws or the destructive flouting of social conventions.)

1. Confirm Your Kill: This rule is just as true of violence as it is of chores. If you start something, don't just finish it, make fucking sure its done. Any number of problems is prevented by just making sure that the task you set out to do really is a done deal. This particular rule grows from the old "anything worth doing is worth doing well" maxim, only focused more directly on the solving of problems.

2. Be a Person: I've always found it vitally important to define personhood. Even more so for the individual than for society. A civilization has to on some level acquiesce to the least possible definition of personhood but I feel like one should hold themselves to a higher standard than the bare minimum of what society can call a person. In that vein, I think everyone should at some point sit down and define for themselves what it means to be a person, not just a human. You don't have to (and shouldn't) enforce this definition on others, but you should absolutely ensure that you live up to it... and probably avoid people who fall short of your definition to avoid the inevitable preventable conflict.

3. Don't Be That Guy: We all know That Guy. Sex, gender, creed, color, there is no category of human designation that is immune to That Guy. That Guy can come from anywhere, be anyone, but they are always a dick, they're Machiavellian, they're shitty, they lack loyalty, compassion and any sense of comradery. Fuck That Guy, its not even enough to not be That Guy, you should do everything you can to not seem like That Guy just to avoid confusion, at least partially because of Rule 4.

4. Kill That Guy: You probably don't have to actually kill this fucker, but definitely cut them out of your life. Nothing good ever comes from dealing with That Guy. Ever. Avoid whenever possible and do whatever you can be comfortable with to keep them out of your shit.

5. We Kill Monsters: Evil prevails because the Good fail to act or whatever. If you see someone being hurt and you do nothing then you are culpable. Not as fully as the one doing harm, but if you can do something and you don't then fuck you, you fail at society. Once again, you don't have to hurt anybody, but we have a responsibility as members of a society to help each other, that is the entire reason behind civilization.

In Which My Philosophy Digs Me a Hole

Alright, I've written about this kind of thing before but I feel like it needs to be discussed in more general terms. The more power you accumulate, in literally any measure of power, the less freedom you have. See that dot to the right there? That's a period.

Now I'm going to put away my asshole hat and explain. If you are reading this you live in a fucking society. If you live in a society you are beholden, in one way or another, to other people in the society. Be it for your food or the electricity that powers your shit or just goddamn human contact, you owe. Now its very easy to go about this as some kind of absurdly complex system of poorly metered debt, but that would be fucking stupid. The better method of interacting as a society is a perpetual effort to pay it forward, to make society as a whole a better place. The greater your personal success, and thus the more resources you've tapped in order to succeed, the more you can and should do to improve society. Not by some circuitous bullshit pseudoeconomics, personally, like you actually give a shit.

Here's where things get a little weird. For some people forgoing selfish bullshit because its shitty and idiotic isn't enough, so there's more. If you accumulate power and fail to utilize your assets to benefit society, society has a responsibility to take your fucking power away. We are individuals and that's important to remember, but we are all in this together whether we like it or not. Having someone accumulate power without making an effort to actively, directly improve the quality of life around them is exploitative to all of us.

In this country especially this has been a discussion made in bad faith. There is a great deal of talk of the inevitability of social good arising from personal freedom. Which would be great if there wasn't a predisposition towards being a cunt. Not everyone has it, but enough people have it that just assuming that successful people aren't going to be shitty is willfully self-destructive. To simultaneously massacre two goodhearted maxims, whatever gets you off, as long as you don't fuck anybody over. Power is a form of freedom and freedom must be tempered by responsibility or it is monstrous, and dealing with monsters is a terminal endeavor for at least one party.

Wade-Giles Fuckery, and Not Deadpool/Buffy Slashfic

Alright folks, this is going to be a (hopefully) short nerd rant. We all know by this point that I have no patience for traditions built on bad ground. Today's shining shit shack of social standards revolves around the process of romanizing languages. I appreciate the value of converting non-english languages into characters comprehensible to english speakers/readers, it would just be great if we made any effort to do that. For instance the Gaelic word Samhain is pronounced sowwan or sahwin. That third letter is a fucking m and has no goddamn place in that word. I've heard the argument that its silent but silent letters are a hold out of a system whereby people use the ability to write "accurately" to enforce social barriers, so fuck that arbitrary elitist bullshit.

Arguably the most pronounced example of this stupidity is Wade-Giles transliteration. This is a method of converting Chinese, which is nuanced and beautiful, into English without any consideration for how those words are spoken. You may have noticed this renders the technique essentially useless for actually learning or communicating the fucking language. There is a chart at the bottom of that link that compares different phonemes and how they are written in Wade-Giles, which was established by two brits at the height of british cuntblubbery in China, and Pinyin, which is the method actually used by the people who speak the language. If you check that list you'll notice that WG seems to have valued exotic spelling conventions over anything even vaguely approaching accuracy.

This isn't super uncommon in romanizing languages, but it is fucking absurd. We romanize languages so that we can learn that language or at least be able to pronounce relevant words without sounding like a fucking moron. So I vote that we start actually writing things phonetically, or at very least consulting with native speakers before we decide how we ought to pronounce their words. Maybe someday we can live in a world where Daoism doesn't set off spell check and its foundational book isn't written as onomatopoeia for an old timey cash register.

The Z Word

I've been playing a great deal of Dying Light lately, and its brought to mind some issues I have with the whole zombie genre. First, let me say that I'm not one of the hipster/geeks that hates zombies because they're all mainstream now. I will gladly agree that zombie fiction has gotten entirely too pervasive and easily exploited. Do we need zombie romance movies? No, that's fucking gross. Does almost every threat to mankind need to be zombies? Fuck no, try harder Hollywood. I love zombie fiction, largely because of the fact that the zombies are the least interesting part of it. Its a rich, effective device that allows all sorts of commentary and satire to thrive when used well.

My concern rises from the habit in zombie fiction to over value the zombies themselves. Now, I don't mean that the hungry dead shouldn't be a pressing and inevitable threat, but zombies (real, shambling, moaning corpses; if your zombies still have any chance of being "cured" i.e. victims of a communicable anger problem, you're just being dishonest) are scary enough on their own. Zombies are a pervasive, constant and yet still surprising concern. They can and will be everywhere, you will never really be safe from them and they can and do just come out of nowhere. This makes for an amazing threat... so stop fucking giving them superpowers. Considering how often the basic premise of so many zombie movies is that man is the real monster (all of which after 1970 are lazy and derivative), the zombies themselves ought not be magic superbeings.

In games like Dying Light the whole idea is that mankind is fucking terrible given even the slightest provocation. The high number of heavily mutated undead is unnecessary because the normal undead often come out of nowhere. Really, the greatest threats are being surprised by zombies (the primary fear of which comes from a problem the game resolves in the first 5 minutes of cut scene), the consumptive evil of other survivors, or just the straight up vile asscovering of the political forces deciding the fate of the survivors. I could be okay with them saying that the fresh dead are still limber enough to be runners, sure, scary and understandable. However, some zombies being nine feet tall and built like the Goddamn Mountain puts a look on my face like a disappointed sibling. Pretty much all of the enemies in the game stop being particularly difficult to kill about half way through so making special monsters that are marginally more difficult kinda cheapens the narrative.

This is, admittedly a very niche argument. I realize that me bitching about the narrative and design weaknesses of a genre predicated upon the wakening of the dead, hungry and mindless, to murder and consume the living is yelling in the dark at best. However, as we've discussed previously, our fiction both shapes and represents us, so allowing and encouraging shitty fiction is a disservice to all of us. Also, I'm a huge geek, this is what I do.

The Path to Agoraphobia is Paved with Good Intentions, Poorly Executed.

Over the course of the last several years I've pretty much completely lost the ability to functionally interact with people. I'm not completely sure when it started but it probably had something to do with the fact that I stopped leaving the house. There was a period in which I could only afford to leave the house if I was looking for or going to work and even then bus fare was a prohibitive expense. Preexisting antisocial traits started to assert themselves more aggressively as my whole interaction with society was relegated to news-bites and poorly contextualized academia (thanks higher education!). Over time habits were established in such a way that I could no longer come up with reasons to go out. After I was told outright not to get a fucking job the idea of leaving the house fell even farther from a necessary evil to make ends meet to the least interesting or meaningful way to waste my wife's money, so I just stopped.

I've come to understand, with some work, what a bad idea this was. Justification became rule, rule became habit and habit became neurosis. Now the thought of doing anything at all, much less anything out of the house is accompanied by a combination of panic, apathy, and rationalizing my inaction. Now I can't even trust myself to be able to break the habit without outsourcing my motivation to someone else. I will get better, I have to.

Thanks for playing therapist, beloved internet. Now I'm going to go psyche myself up so I might be able to do something today.

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.

The Downward Spiral is My Favorite Carnival Ride

I've written about my anger issues before, and I've written about depression both in personal and general senses. Recently, its become important to me to note how these things interact and what its like when they do.

First let me say, if you have rage+depression issues, I'm sorry. You're probably fucked. I'm sure there are extensive medication and therapy cocktails that might pull some people out but I've no faith in them. I've yet to see any theory of anger management that seems even vaguely effective and, while I'm sure that many people are helped by modern depression treatments, I find that depression has too many sharp edges that don't take to softening.

The trouble with being a rage addicted depressive is that the cycle never really ends. You get depressed, so you get sensitive, then something happens (usually something meaningless) and you flip the fuck out. When all the face-kicking and abyssal glossolalia has passed you're left feeling (rightly) like a colossal, diseased dick; so your depression gets worse because now you have a reason to hate yourself. As the depression gets worse you get more sensitive and less able to completely describe how you feel or what you are thinking, making you more likely to get mad again and continue the cycle.

Now for the bad news. Nothing you are capable of doing about it yourself will make it any better. Once again, therapy/medication have the potential to save a few of us, but I've yet to see any good works be done. If you try to mitigate your rage the people around you will likely be unable to fully let go of the fact that you are prone to spectacular bouts of aggression. Most people have difficulty distinguishing between you trying to let go of your anger so it doesn't poison you and you being a fucking psychotic. Worse, other people trying to tell you that everything is okay or that they don't blame you will only reinforce the underlying depressive force behind the anger.

I think about killing myself the same way most people think about ordering dinner. I think about assaulting others as at worst an interesting way to spend a day. I've spent my whole life trying to find a way to handle this. I've tried giving in and letting my imbalance run me, I've tried fighting it, I've tried distance and detachment. I've even tried seeking help. The most I can offer is this, surround yourself with forgiving people who love you and want to see you get better and keep fighting. I have to hope that this gets better, I'm sure I've seen it happen somewhere. Probably.

Children in Africa are the Primary Determinants of the Price of Beans

So, here's the thing, I'm going to try not to flip out about this so bear with me. People who bitch about how their life isn't blowjobs and free booze are fucking idiots. It sucks that your phone can't take on an SUV and then load up what ever bullshit app draws your fancy. It is not a tragedy, it is not a miscarriage of justice. People who complain about social injustice and first world oppression are not those people.

This particular rant has been building for a while so I will try to stay focused. I will admit that there are things worthy of the ignominy of the title of "first world problems". Nearly anything relating, with the noted exception of matters of cyber security, to whatever gadget happens to be shining up pop culture, be it 'phone, 'pad, or 'tooth, is a bullshit problem. I think on some level we all comprehend this. Really, any time the person complaining could intelligibly insert the phrase, "don't you know who I am" and not break the flow of the complaint we're talking about a bullshit problem. Ditto with any situation where the person bitching feels comfortable tapping social/political/monetary status as leverage, and any time someone mistakes a luxury for a right. Those who fall into this pit of indulgence and entitlement are barely even people, at best they're children bitching about their birthday presents.

That said, discussing actual, meaningful concerns and abuses is always pertinent. Someone fearing rape or abuse for discussing rape or abuse is never okay, no matter what else is going on in the world. Note, I linked that whole sentence but I could quite easily have linked every fucking word to a different story, no single one more than five years old. The problems of racism, sexism, oppression and corruption in the first world are in no fucking way mitigated by atrocities and injustice in other parts of the world. This seems to be a problem of flawed comparison, but its important to keep in mind that the fact that there are places in this world where representatives of the local government can go a-full on-viking in civilian communities doesn't make the insidious othering and knee-jerk, reactionary defensiveness of American police better. Its like the terrible high school girl who surrounds herself with less attractive people to make herself look better. She isn't making herself less of a horrible person, isn't actually improving her appearance, just lowering the local average to make herself seem more worthwhile. Knowledge of the fact that there are children fighting and starving in Africa doesn't reduce the tragedy of children who work themselves to ruin in American tobacco farms.

I'm starting to run the risk of spitting bile on this so I will just finish up by paraphrasing my least favorite mythology, maybe take care of your own shit before you start trying to solve problems halfway around the fucking world.

YKWFA: The Passage of Time

So apparently today is the first day of 2015. I will admit, 2014 kinda got away from me, what with all the rage and depression and all the goddamn bees. Just... so many bees.

Anyway, there are a few things (other than listening to unpopular music and slowly turning into the horrible old man that is my birthright) that pleased me about this last year. First, after much rigamarole and absurd bullshit, my home state decided to make marijuana at least theoretically available for recreational use. Now don't get me wrong, the way they went about it was childish and insulting and ineffectual to a spectacular degree, but it happened. So now a lot of people who want to utilize their minds for something more pleasurable than trying to contribute to the inevitable heat death of the universe with their hate (like me) have a non-lobotomy option.

Also, both Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Zero Theorem were things. Since Andy Serkis is some kind of hero sent from the future to make the present not suck so bad and Terry Gilliam is a Companion of the One True God Returned, these are both things that deserve positive consideration. Christoph Waltz, Nick Offerman, and Alan Tudyk also exist and this is a wonderful thing. Actually, cinema wasn't particularly hopeless in general this year. For the most part. Some stuff was pretty fucking good.

The last thing that really made this last year was the fact that I have a wife. Now I've had a wife for a while now, but having her around goes leagues towards to making life bearable. I'm sure that sounds cheesy and pandering, but if you have an SO and you don't feel that way about them you probably shouldn't be doing that. Having a significant other I mean.

There was a great deal of fuck-that last year, lets all try and get past that this year and actually be people with each other. Good luck out there.

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.

You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry

Alright folks, we're back, relocated, recaffeinated, and (after entirely too fucking long) possessed of internet fit to shake the heavens or something. As is tradition, we're gonna leap right back into it with me ranting. The topic of the day is something close to my heart in several, possibly dangerous, ways. Today I'm going to discuss anger. My anger specifically. Its not that I don't care about the righteous indignation of others or the mindless, squalling, rage that some partake of. It isn't even that my anger is shiny and pretty and made of magical hats, though that may bare discussion at a later date.

I'm going to talk about my anger, and the joys and pitfalls therein, because its the only anger I can effectively describe. As some of the more observant readers may have noticed I'm a bit prone to aggression. Rage comes to me with an ease that has been rightfully described as hopeless. I'm pretty good at keeping it in hand enough to avoid actually injuring someone. Unfortunately that doesn't counter the fact that I regularly get the sort of scorched-earth, damn-the-family-line-forever kind of mad that is largely reserved for doomed anti-heroes and relatable villains. Now, I can't say that was never really a problem, mostly because I never really bothered to examine it, but it was something that I never felt I could really do anything about. I mean reactive catharsis tends to be a dopamine loop of the worst kind, and suppressing anger just seems like a great way to snap your fucking brain and wake up in the ward.

Being angry feels really, really good. Dangerously good. It makes me feel powerful, active, motivated in ways that have been unavailable to me in any other state. Its also caused me to hurt people I care about, lose opportunities that I needed to take, and lose arguments that I couldn't afford to lose, not because I was wrong or not thinking clearly, but because I was mad and so my audience was incapable of receiving my point. I've been trying to let go of my anger recently. Not bottle it up or let it out, just let it go. Stop myself and consider the rage itself. Is it productive? Is it meaningful? Or is it just a fire in my chest waiting for the rest of me to catch. It helps, and it is getting better. Do I still get mad enough I feel like I'm going to pass out from the headache it gives me, yes, but only when a succession of idiotic, incompetent cunts absolutely and continuously fails at their one and only job for two weeks despite proper preparation and constant direction. (Later there will be a link here to Brian's post about our adventures in internet acquisition.) I just try and let the useless anger go, go cook something until I calm down, take a few deep breaths and watch a movie, whatever. This is a troublesome process but it is helping. I'm pretty sure I'll always be a wrathful, hate-ridden person; but I refuse to let that hate run roughshod over my life anymore.

Unreasonably Hostel

As you may have gathered Brian and I watch a fair number of movies. During our cinematic escapades I've noticed something that grates on me in a weird way. I have yet to see a movie service, streaming or otherwise, that can figure out their genres.

Its not a huge deal, I'm not suppressing facial ticks or digging up the ol' Nailbat of Disapproval, but when I'm looking for a nice psychological thriller and Netflix offers Kiss the Girls and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in the same breath; it goes from funny to annoying pretty quick. That one isn't that bad, I can dig it, bugs happen in any automated system. The thing that bugs me the most is (as per usual) horror movies. It seems these days that anything that has a monster or any significant gore in it counts as horror. Black Death is not a fucking horror movie, an amazing, slow-burn, psychological thriller and one of Sean "Dying is my Job" Bean's best showings sure, but scary it ain't. Now, the organizational failings of a few internet services is disappointing but I can't entirely blame them when neither the people making the movies, nor the people watching them can get their shit together.

There has been a slow divergence in what kind of story is presented as audiences change, but this change hasn't really been observed in our categorizing genres. Thriller has slowly evolved out of the horror category but that's about it. Horror movies are still essentially any movie that makes you any kind of uncomfortable. Comedy is still just anything that can cram more than two one liners into a script. Sci-fi and fantasy still get crammed together (which I kind of understand, considering most people only really differentiate in that one is uses technology and one uses magic) and Action/adventure, well, I don't really have any issue with that one actually, both the movies in the genre and the genre itself are a little too straight forward to fuck up.

I admit that I talk a lot about needing better categorization of things but I feel it really is important. Specification is an absurdly important aspect of language, its how we know what the fuck people are talking about. Its how we know what we're looking at. This is especially apparent with movies. I like gore, the occasional torture-porn movie can be a delightful romp through the nastier bits of the psyche, but torture-porn isn't fucking scary. Unsettling, hopefully, but not scary; and the urges that lead to either watching horror or gore are very fucking different. Wanting to watch a bunch of shitty, pandering cunts get ironied to death makes someone getting skull-fucked by a power drill a disappointing sight.

Rom-coms are another pain point for me, but honestly less because I'm usually looking for something else when I stumble on a romantic comedy and more because they're just... just so bad. But that's another post entirely.
 
I know its nit-picky but I think we can do better than just shoehorning disparate themes together under whatever happens to be handy. We're in charge of this shit, we can make new categories as new subjects arise and, considering how much time us movie geeks spend on things like this, there isn't any reason not to make the fucking effort.

A New Project

Eshi and I both love movies, and have wanted to watch more for a while now. A little while ago I suggested to Eshi that, since we have a lot of time on our hands currently, we should watch a movie a day. Now that our blog has hit the sixth month mark, if you include our previous incarnation, I wanted us to include that with our blog along with us doing some analysis/review of the movies we watched. It might not be one movie a day (probably more like 4-5 a week), but we will try our best to get close to that goal.

So, starting next Friday I will be posting a list of the movies we watched along with a bit of a review of them on here. If anyone has any suggestions for movies to watch please let us know in the comments section of any of the posts pertaining to this project.