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Friday, May 27, 2011
We're Back...
It's been about a solid two months of me really being quiet. It's been two months of good and bad times alike. I got to witness The Airborne Toxic Event, starting to finally get my Back Ups! product line fleshed out, witness Castiel defy Dean and Heaven, and some other cool moments as well as some bad moments. Those being what I hope to call trivial. Look out for a new Ghostbusting.net this June!
Monday, May 23, 2011
Apocalyptic Musings
May 21 has come and gone. There was no worldwide earthquake. The planet remains intact, with no amount of its billions of faithful having been called from its surface to receive the beauty immortal. What must one find, looking now upon a spring morning, if one was expecting the Rapture to have occurred two days ago? The sun shining horribly. The trees swaying in mute oblivion of the tumult that did not come, murmuring in a breeze that is oppressively free of ash and fire. The birds' songs offensive, mocking, laughing that nothing has been destroyed. They continue to live and breed and flit about in hateful glee that no sinners' tombs have opened and that no godless dead are to be seen lying upon the earth. How awful that we must persist to walk on this vulgar soil, under skies unmarred by pillars of smoke, in the ugly prison of the flesh. We have been denied the bliss of utter ruin, and we are left here in the tyranny of life's continuity.
Self-made prophet Harold Camping said of the apocalypse, "I am utterly absolutely, absolutely convinced it's going to happen." His certainty proved infectious; some believers left their homes and families and burned away their savings to spread Camping's message. It didn't matter if they had nothing, they might have reasoned, because they were soon going to a place where they would have everything. In an attempt to display their disdain for the physical realm, to show that they had no need of worldly things, they liquidated every asset. They cast their every possession away as utterly without purpose any longer, but I wonder, now, how their views may have changed. Now that they have no money, I wonder how unnecessary their worldly possessions seem. I wonder how negligible their family bonds appear now that they have cut them all in anticipation of joining a better family in a better place.
I wonder if they can see how selfish they have been.
No, the world did not end. It will not end in October, and it will not end in 2012, nor should we be so cavalier as to rejoice that it might. Should we be swayed by the fervor of those who hope for calamity? Surely, the masses who pray even now for the universe to meet its end in a holy inferno must remain far from the rational centers of our societies - if such things can be said to exist. Surely we must not heed them even to mock them; for, ostracized and ridiculed, they become martyrs in their own minds. Some people, when given a voice, have nothing to say but doomsday prophesies and bilious rhetoric, and, while I don't support gagging these bloodthirsty people, I do think that we should be more discerning about whose voices and opinions we might grant equivalence in public discourse.
Self-made prophet Harold Camping said of the apocalypse, "I am utterly absolutely, absolutely convinced it's going to happen." His certainty proved infectious; some believers left their homes and families and burned away their savings to spread Camping's message. It didn't matter if they had nothing, they might have reasoned, because they were soon going to a place where they would have everything. In an attempt to display their disdain for the physical realm, to show that they had no need of worldly things, they liquidated every asset. They cast their every possession away as utterly without purpose any longer, but I wonder, now, how their views may have changed. Now that they have no money, I wonder how unnecessary their worldly possessions seem. I wonder how negligible their family bonds appear now that they have cut them all in anticipation of joining a better family in a better place.
I wonder if they can see how selfish they have been.
No, the world did not end. It will not end in October, and it will not end in 2012, nor should we be so cavalier as to rejoice that it might. Should we be swayed by the fervor of those who hope for calamity? Surely, the masses who pray even now for the universe to meet its end in a holy inferno must remain far from the rational centers of our societies - if such things can be said to exist. Surely we must not heed them even to mock them; for, ostracized and ridiculed, they become martyrs in their own minds. Some people, when given a voice, have nothing to say but doomsday prophesies and bilious rhetoric, and, while I don't support gagging these bloodthirsty people, I do think that we should be more discerning about whose voices and opinions we might grant equivalence in public discourse.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Armored Core For Answer
So, a couple weeks ago I picked up a game that was a mech game, cause you know how much nerds like us love mech smash em' up games, especially growing up on the gundam series as well as other shows. The game being Armored Core for Answer, and damn, was it good! You pretty much start out with a low powered mech, buil it up and in time also fighter harder mechs and missions. The designs are awesome, as are some of the mechs. Laser swords, mechs that have fast dashes and speed to make you miss. A lot of customization options, build a fast, lightweight mech built to run circles around your enemy while you decimate them, build a medium or heavyweight craft, with more armor instead of speed, to bulk up against the enemy, even have four legs! You can also have a tank base for legs! Definitely a great game, good replay value, as after you beat it the first time, you have to complete the storyline playing from the other side of the story. This game series has also been around for a while, they are getting ready to release Armored Core 5, and I'm already looking forward to buy it when it comes out.
Thinking Inside the Box
I recently saw this comic on 9gag. It's intended to be inspirational, and many commenters found it to be so.
"Totally blown away by this post," says one, "Haven't seen anything so inspiring in a long time. I'm not an artist, but I am a musician. I can quite easily relate to this."
I tend to disagree that a musician is not an artist, but that's neither here nor there. Another commenter writes:
"You can overcome anything if you believe in what you're doing, and if you believe in art, there surely are no borders at all."
This is a popular sentiment, and I can understand why. To some who have been successful, it must feel as though their determination paid off. They must look back at the road they have taken and conclude that it was the choice to continue following their dreams that lead them to success and happiness. But surely they cannot feel this way all the time. Surely they must sometimes look back upon things that they have not achieved despite their skill, hope, and drive. And are they correct in their assumption? For every man who has achieved his dream of becoming a professional artist, there are at two men with equal or greater talent who clean convenience stores for a living. If all it took to become a professional artist was faith in yourself and the courage to follow your dreams, then there would likely be no one grinding stumps or cleaning elevator shafts.
It's nice to think that anything is possible - that there are no borders, or that borders are illusions. At the risk of sounding heartless and pragmatic, it is actually more conducive to success to see our limitations and to have a realistic understanding of which we can push beyond and which are likely to constrain us despite our best efforts. A prudent person sees the borders and is honest about them. In the comic, a parent says: "It is very hard to make it as an artist, and talent isn't always enough. You need luck. You should consider other options, too." This is sound, rational advice, yet the comic tosses it aside. The artist urges us to draw outside the box, as if reason and critical thinking are as oppressive a barrier as The Berlin Wall. It makes an enemy, or at least an obstacle, out of good advice, promoting instead instead the belief that we must ignore anyone who says anything that does not play into our fantasy.
Encouragement is bad when it is overindulgent. Excessive admiration, especially when not balanced with realistic feedback, is misleading and may help to insulate a person against the reality of his or her own inadequacy. Some people who succeed will have less skill than you do. Some will have less drive. Some talented artists will toil forever in obscurity for one reason or another. If you aim for the moon, you may not necessarily land among the stars - you may fail utterly to even get off the ground. The bottom line is this:
Borders are real. Do not ignore them, do not be paralyzed by them. Wisdom and compassion are nobler goals than renown or financial success, and a wise person seeks first to learn which walls can be broken down or circumnavigated, which must be scaled, and which it would be a waste of time to attempt to bypass in the first place.
"Totally blown away by this post," says one, "Haven't seen anything so inspiring in a long time. I'm not an artist, but I am a musician. I can quite easily relate to this."
I tend to disagree that a musician is not an artist, but that's neither here nor there. Another commenter writes:
"You can overcome anything if you believe in what you're doing, and if you believe in art, there surely are no borders at all."
This is a popular sentiment, and I can understand why. To some who have been successful, it must feel as though their determination paid off. They must look back at the road they have taken and conclude that it was the choice to continue following their dreams that lead them to success and happiness. But surely they cannot feel this way all the time. Surely they must sometimes look back upon things that they have not achieved despite their skill, hope, and drive. And are they correct in their assumption? For every man who has achieved his dream of becoming a professional artist, there are at two men with equal or greater talent who clean convenience stores for a living. If all it took to become a professional artist was faith in yourself and the courage to follow your dreams, then there would likely be no one grinding stumps or cleaning elevator shafts.
It's nice to think that anything is possible - that there are no borders, or that borders are illusions. At the risk of sounding heartless and pragmatic, it is actually more conducive to success to see our limitations and to have a realistic understanding of which we can push beyond and which are likely to constrain us despite our best efforts. A prudent person sees the borders and is honest about them. In the comic, a parent says: "It is very hard to make it as an artist, and talent isn't always enough. You need luck. You should consider other options, too." This is sound, rational advice, yet the comic tosses it aside. The artist urges us to draw outside the box, as if reason and critical thinking are as oppressive a barrier as The Berlin Wall. It makes an enemy, or at least an obstacle, out of good advice, promoting instead instead the belief that we must ignore anyone who says anything that does not play into our fantasy.
Encouragement is bad when it is overindulgent. Excessive admiration, especially when not balanced with realistic feedback, is misleading and may help to insulate a person against the reality of his or her own inadequacy. Some people who succeed will have less skill than you do. Some will have less drive. Some talented artists will toil forever in obscurity for one reason or another. If you aim for the moon, you may not necessarily land among the stars - you may fail utterly to even get off the ground. The bottom line is this:
Borders are real. Do not ignore them, do not be paralyzed by them. Wisdom and compassion are nobler goals than renown or financial success, and a wise person seeks first to learn which walls can be broken down or circumnavigated, which must be scaled, and which it would be a waste of time to attempt to bypass in the first place.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
'cause the sign said RUN
Remember the time you sold your soul to save the world? Well it looks like you're going to need to do more than that. Get me the afterburners because things are going to get heated soon.
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Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The Self-Sinking Ship
Mother's Day has come and gone, and I did nothing more than leave a message on my mom's Facebook wall to commemorate it. I am, in general, uncomfortable with holidays; love, friendship, and kindness should never be compulsory, but trying to break from the tradition of celebrating holidays like Mother's Day is pretty difficult. Holidays are symbolic, and institutionalized symbolism soon strips the celebrated referent of any connection to its image, leaving future observers going through the mindless motions of ceremony ignorant of the ultimate reason for their actions. This kind of subservience to tradition has always left a bad taste in my mouth.
Mother's Day has its roots in feminism. Julia Ward Howe wrote "The Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870 as a response to the Civil War. It called for women to take a more active role in directing society, which is noble and right. By 1920, the efforts of Mothers' Day Work Clubs had brought the holiday well into the public arena, and with that came commercialization which should have been inevitable. But maybe we were more innocent then. Maybe we trusted that integrity could endure even the mad scramble to convince fools with guilty consciences and issues with pathological mother-worship to part with their money. How long it took for Howe to be forgotten, I have no idea. Ann Jarvis is, perhaps, even less-remembered, but without her it is likely that Mother's Day would not have grown into the institution it is today.
And that is my point. Mother's Day is an institution. If I want to honor my mother, I can do it any day of the year. The responsibility of women to act to change society for the better is lost beneath empty tradition. Today, Mother's Day challenges no stereotypes. It does not challenge anyone or anything. It has become just another day on which we are expected to buy certain things. This is what I hate about holidays - they are meaningless, and they should have meaning. They are excessive and exploitative, and we should respond with a call to reject them but for one sad fact: that call for change would eventually become as pointless a symbol as Mother's Day is now.
Honor your mother as she deserves to be honored; and if she does not deserve it, then honor someone who is truly worthy. No one deserves love and respect simply because they fit into a certain marketing demographic. Tradition devalues itself over time. Take the initiative to make your world, if not the world at large, a place in which, even if our innocence is lost, we can still do what is best for ourselves.
Mother's Day has its roots in feminism. Julia Ward Howe wrote "The Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870 as a response to the Civil War. It called for women to take a more active role in directing society, which is noble and right. By 1920, the efforts of Mothers' Day Work Clubs had brought the holiday well into the public arena, and with that came commercialization which should have been inevitable. But maybe we were more innocent then. Maybe we trusted that integrity could endure even the mad scramble to convince fools with guilty consciences and issues with pathological mother-worship to part with their money. How long it took for Howe to be forgotten, I have no idea. Ann Jarvis is, perhaps, even less-remembered, but without her it is likely that Mother's Day would not have grown into the institution it is today.
And that is my point. Mother's Day is an institution. If I want to honor my mother, I can do it any day of the year. The responsibility of women to act to change society for the better is lost beneath empty tradition. Today, Mother's Day challenges no stereotypes. It does not challenge anyone or anything. It has become just another day on which we are expected to buy certain things. This is what I hate about holidays - they are meaningless, and they should have meaning. They are excessive and exploitative, and we should respond with a call to reject them but for one sad fact: that call for change would eventually become as pointless a symbol as Mother's Day is now.
Honor your mother as she deserves to be honored; and if she does not deserve it, then honor someone who is truly worthy. No one deserves love and respect simply because they fit into a certain marketing demographic. Tradition devalues itself over time. Take the initiative to make your world, if not the world at large, a place in which, even if our innocence is lost, we can still do what is best for ourselves.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The War of Ideals
Well, after 10 years, Osama bin Laden is dead. As we've all heard by now, he was killed in a US military raid on his palatial compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Spontaneous celebration broke out in many places across the country. Twitter lit up with doubts, praise, and gallows humor. But a question remains in my mind: what, precisely, have we destroyed?
I have no head for politics. I've always been suspicious of the will to power, though I understand that people need leaders. It is a rule without exception that power corrupts; we can only hope to put in power those who are less corruptible than others. No one is incorruptible. All that said, layperson that I am, I cannot begin to try and predict what might be ahead for us now. Are we in less danger? Are we freer? Have we banished a darkness? At the risk of sounding like a pessimist, it doesn't feel like it.
Long have we been at war. Our foes are immaterial, ideals more than people; perhaps I can't be as ecstatic about bin Laden's death as some seem to be because, though he masterminded the largest attack on US soil, he was more effective as a symbol than he really was as a man. And we all know that symbols don't die - they simply shift from one person to the next.
I don't know what's to come. Maybe there will be a huge backlash. Maybe there will be no backlash at all. The War of Ideals is not fought on a battleground; there are no front lines. President Obama has repeatedly stated that we are not at war with Islam. In the speech he gave just two nights ago, in which he announced bin Laden's death, he insisted that Osama was not a Muslim leader. In light of that, I'd like to point out that bin Laden was given a Muslim burial. He was a Sunni, and the founder of al-Qaeda, a militant Islamist group. I submit, while not intending to mount any kind of pulpit here, that Mr. Obama may have worried about how it might sound to the "Massacre those who insult Islam" crowd if he were to openly declare war on their religion. Whatever happens, I can promise that "Islam" will continue to reside on the lips of the concerned, even as those very mouths move to deny that ideology has anything to do with the current conflicts.
We have killed a man. Have we achieved our revenge? The beliefs that make us capable of killing people en masse, the mandates that we believe make us responsible for saving our own from metaphysical corruption - or from imagined persecution - will persist in spite of the destruction of one of their purveyors. The War of Ideals is unaffected by the limited resources of the combatants. After all, when it comes to division and violent xenophobia, our resources are very nearly boundless.
I have no head for politics. I've always been suspicious of the will to power, though I understand that people need leaders. It is a rule without exception that power corrupts; we can only hope to put in power those who are less corruptible than others. No one is incorruptible. All that said, layperson that I am, I cannot begin to try and predict what might be ahead for us now. Are we in less danger? Are we freer? Have we banished a darkness? At the risk of sounding like a pessimist, it doesn't feel like it.
Long have we been at war. Our foes are immaterial, ideals more than people; perhaps I can't be as ecstatic about bin Laden's death as some seem to be because, though he masterminded the largest attack on US soil, he was more effective as a symbol than he really was as a man. And we all know that symbols don't die - they simply shift from one person to the next.
I don't know what's to come. Maybe there will be a huge backlash. Maybe there will be no backlash at all. The War of Ideals is not fought on a battleground; there are no front lines. President Obama has repeatedly stated that we are not at war with Islam. In the speech he gave just two nights ago, in which he announced bin Laden's death, he insisted that Osama was not a Muslim leader. In light of that, I'd like to point out that bin Laden was given a Muslim burial. He was a Sunni, and the founder of al-Qaeda, a militant Islamist group. I submit, while not intending to mount any kind of pulpit here, that Mr. Obama may have worried about how it might sound to the "Massacre those who insult Islam" crowd if he were to openly declare war on their religion. Whatever happens, I can promise that "Islam" will continue to reside on the lips of the concerned, even as those very mouths move to deny that ideology has anything to do with the current conflicts.
We have killed a man. Have we achieved our revenge? The beliefs that make us capable of killing people en masse, the mandates that we believe make us responsible for saving our own from metaphysical corruption - or from imagined persecution - will persist in spite of the destruction of one of their purveyors. The War of Ideals is unaffected by the limited resources of the combatants. After all, when it comes to division and violent xenophobia, our resources are very nearly boundless.
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