Tears of St. Lawrence

Friday was aptly named, being that I spent it at Matt's place cooking up veggie tempura and attempting to roll sushi. We played an Oriental Adventures style game based on Exalted mechanics. After a night of pretending to be Asian, we went outside, tried to catch the meteor shower, failed, and went home. The Leonids, by the way, are also known as the Tears of St. Lawrence because they fall near his feast day. St. Lawrence is famous for being burned alive on a gridiron, and is reported to have said, "Now you may turn me over, my body is roasted enough on this side." I don't know what it is with Catholic saints all being more famous for dying in a hideous manner than for doing good deeds. My sister's church, for example is lined with pictures of bleeding Korean martyrs. I personally, think it would be more important to learn how to live well than to die well.

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Went to Atlantic City on Saturday.

Hot as balls on the beach, lots of old people, little Chinese men, chain-smokers at slot machines, and shiny lights. Carl made $200 on poker. He calculates that as basically earning $60 an hour. Congratulations, Carl. He has a reputation in roleplaying games for making deals with demons in exchange for dark power, and usually dying in hideous ways, so this isn't surprising. (Mike Robbins even made a comic series called, "The many deaths of Carl.") I also got an economics lesson. I couldn't gamble legally (since when has the gambling age been 21???) and the minimum bets on craps were like $10. Blackjack was like $20. As opposed to um, Guild Wars, which costs $50 and will last me a year.

Old Senate fogeys like complaining that video games are sinful. You all have probably heard the big scandal about Grand Theft Auto's Hot Coffee mod (which I, undoubtedly like thousands of others, promptly downloaded after all the press). While I find games like GTA distasteful, and I know parenting is a hard job even without video games, the only way to get a mod like Hot Coffee is to... mod.

Fact of Life #1: If some hacker accesses areas of the game that were intentionally locked off, that's not the game developer's fault. That's hacking. Duh.

Tons and tons of unfinished code remains in all games as a matter of course, which can't be deleted, only locked off. If someone goes out of their way to hack the game, who's fault is that?

Fact of Life #2: Fourteen year old boys will masturbate. I don't know why parents are so shocked to hear this. "Oh, my little Johnny would never touch his weewee!" Talk to your kids about sex. If you slap your son everytime he looks at a breast, he'll grow up neurotic. This isn't to say, give your kids smut, but don't, you know, go ballistic.

Jack Thompson even condemned the Sims as being sinful. In this life simulation game where you can do anything from getting a job or getting married to washing the dishes or reading the newspaper, Thompson gets his panties in a jumble because in the game you can take a bath or change baby diapers. Woe is me, the lustful nudity! Nevermind that all nekkid people, even kids, are covered up by a blur. Supposedly there are hacks that can remove the blur. Nevermind that naked Sims look like Barbie/Ken dolls, without nipples or genitalia. Nevermind that EA (the company that makes the Sims) cracks down harshly on any such mods that they find. Nevermind that the Sims is the best and most popular example of a game that doesn't rely on sex or violence for entertainment. Nevermind that the Sims is the game that best reaches out to older gamers and women. Nevermind that violent crime this decade is the lowest it's been in history. No no no, Jack Thompson is on a crusade.

Jack Thompson says that game companies are to blame because they encourage modding, nevermind that most modding is the creation of new levels or different character models. Counter-Strike, the first person-shooter where you fight terrorism, started out as a mod for Half-Life and got so popular it's now a separate game. In the case of the Sims, the mod community mostly does innocuous things like custom-designing wallpaper for your house or a new spring outfit for your daughter. While we're busy persecuting game companies for what a very small minority of modders do, why don't we start arresting celebrities for public indecency, since porn sites are photoshopping their heads onto naked bodies?

Of course, like gambling, all the outcry will die down once they realize how much video gaming contributes to the economy...

Hypocrites.

Apparently, I'm going to watch the Leonids in my backyard. Couldn't find a better place for it. I had a week to arrange; you'd think I could have come up with something by now. Nobody's interested anyways. I hope they turn out good; I don't know why I'm so obsessed- maybe it's just that I'm taking a risk going, "Everybody, wake at four in the morning in the dead of pre-winter and come to my place and watch the Leonids" so if they don't show well it'd suck.

Why am I up so late? It's because I'm out to prove a point. Go here and here. And here. Remind you of a certain bivalve guy on Halloween we know? I'm asking this not to be "I Told You So", (well, I am), but because I don't know the Bivalve Guy's name. It's pretty sad. But this was why I was laughing at him so hard on Halloween, when you guys were all staring at me funny for laughing at him so hard. Because he looks like this seven year old anime girl.

She has a very profound quote which I stumbled upon again when I was looking for her picture to "I Told You So" you guys. Here it is:

"History is an endless waltz, so to speak. The triple measure of war, peace, and revolution goes on and on."

Pretty good for a seven year old galactic dictator. This summer, when I had read the quote for the first time, I had thought it profound, but I didn't think much of it. Now it means a lot more to me. It's a bit sad how I get all my quotes from anime or RPGs. Like.
"Justice is not the only right in this world."

Ayn Rand would disagree. But anyhow. I feel I ought to be quoting some eminent ancient philosopher on my spare time, instead of spouting Final Fantasy quotes, but I relate to these more. Well, whatever floats the boat for my generation.

I have discovered a new type of nerd. Male or female, I suppose. Down With The Man Cynical Angst Nerd. It's pretty self explanatory. ALEX. Balsa wood. On a totally unrelated note, I will be upset if I don't see the Leonids on Sunday and have to wait another 33 years for a decent meteor shower just because my parents are like, "It's too cold! It's too early!" If it's too cold and too early, don't go with me. Yes, Alex, I write long blogs. Blogback is not working for me either, Jen, despite me inserting the code in. I'm drawing a "Persistance of Memory" (The melting clock painting by Dali) parody of the Flaming Fork motif. Nick S makes me sad. Something about circumstances. I'm reading his blog, and he's talking about a totally different clique of people. Blogs tend to draw people together, so it's odd that when you read someone's blog it's like you know them so well, but then in real life it's like, "Hi. Bye. Have a nice life." With blogs, I think sometime's it's people's misfortune to be born in the wrong family or on the wrong side of the world. I don't know if humans are inherently good or evil (good, IMHO), but I know that they're inherently capable of being friends, if only we'd let them.