Good Morning, Edward Said!

I've been watching Going Tribal, a Discovery Channel reality show about this British marine who goes to live with various tribes for a month. I find it to be quite interesting, though on the Discovery Channel forum a bunch of anthropologists are stirring up a ruckus.

I concur that the advertising is retarded. "Oohhh, watch the white man try to survive a month with the CANNIBALS!!!" Plus, the generic "tribal" drumbeat, the cliche spiral pattern and leet flame motifs get a thumbs down. You know if they did a show called "Going Oriental" and had a bunch of geishas, dragons and Jackie Chan in the trailer, (with ying yangs and that "chop suey" font), I'd be pretty pissed off too. It'd be almost as bad as the description^* UMBC dining services wrote of our Chinese takeout. Anyway, the show itself is actually pretty good, though I think that the hour-long episodes are too short to give us anywhere near a comprehensive understanding of various cultures. True to its reality show nature, you get all the crazy shit, ("I'm Bruce Parry, watch me drink cow blood!") but not so much normal things.

Of course, all the anthropologists are screaming, "Cultural Imperialism!" I think the anthropologists should pull their heads out of their asses and be glad a show like this was even made, and is widely watched. One of the criticisms I saw was, "OMG how dare the Discovery Channel send a normal joe, and not a trained anthropologist!" I find that to be a paternalistic and imperialistic statement in itself. So the only people who can "study" foreign peoples are "trained scientists"? So the only contact indigenous people should have with the outside world should be people sent there to study them? God. The Suri and the Kombai, among others, are living and breathing people, not Jane Goodall and the monkeys. They should have the final say over who to invite into their homes to live with and befriend, not scientists who want to "protect the natives from cultural contamination." Explorer Bruce Parry never claims to be an objective scientist doing a scholarly documentary. His show is merely the memoir of his personal experience and how it changed him. It's not the be-all-end-all authority about a people, and nothing ever will be. If someone produces a reality show about living in Japan or England or Sweden, will the anthropologists jump on his ass too?

Anthropologists are also annoyed that Bruce Parry spins his experience as being exciting and dangerous. This annoyance is understandable, since for ages anyone who wasn't white has been labeled an exotic, wild savage. To which I respond... exotic, wild, or no, living miles away from the nearest modern medical facility is dangerous. Having bows drawn on you by a dozen Indonesian tribesmen is dangerous. Living in Sudan on the border between two warring ethnic groups, in the middle of a civil war, is dangerous. Parry made it quite clear that his hosts were hospitable and kind, but be that as it may, anyone in his situation is in great danger, regardless of the disposition of his companions. It's a hard life, and it does a great disservice to the people involved to pretend that, "Ladeedadeeda, there's no war or disease here! We live in Rousseau's paradise!"

Bruce Parry has balls. Give him credit for that.

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*"Pungent spices. Delicate, aromatic sauces. Intricate and imaginative combinations of vitamin rich vegetables and chicken, beef, or pork. Mein Bowl provides exotic, high quality food that nourishes the body and soul and creates a positive flowing chi. It's everything that you look for in an Oriental restaurant-and a little bit more. A meal at Mein Bowl isn't just a meal; it's a visit to another culture!"

Scientists Breed Cute Tame Foxes

Awww!

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.

Check out GrowRPG, a great flash game/turn-based strategy/ experiment in chaos theory.

Basically, this is a game in which you build an RPG world turn by turn. So one turn you may "build" a forest, the next a mountain, the next a town. After everything is built, then the hero sets off on his pre-planned adventure through the world you just made, on his quest to slay the great evil. The outcome of his quest is determined not so much by his actions, but by the order in which you build features of the world. A forest that is grown earlier is denser, a town that is built near an ocean can construct shipyards while a town near a forest makes lumber mills, a castle that is well-fortified earlier can repel an attack while a weaker castle smolders.

What's interesting about it, besides being a fun game, is that it gets me to wonder to what extent success or failure is based upon individual actions/decisions, and to what extent it depends on circumstances. In each game, the hero does mostly the same things, but his world determines how well he does, or sometimes even how he does certain things. Play it. You'll understand what I mean.

Knight/Mage

The best short story ever.

A Church completely made out of Legos

Oh, and while you're at it... The Brick Testament, a rendition of the Bible, as told in Lego.

I Hart Darth, the cutest Star Wars webcomic out there.

I found the link via Manic Graffiti, the cutest World of Warcraft webcomic out there.

The Paladinly Fortune Cookie

"Have faith in the force of right and not in the right of force."

Lucky numbers 6, 17, 38, 46, 2 7

LEARN CHINESE: Boss
Lao-Ban

So True

I was chatting on World of Warcraft. A gnome asked me what I did, and I told him I was an econ major.

To which he replied: "So what else do you do, besides gaming and counting money?"

Well...

actually, that's pretty much it.

SMITE!!

I'm proud to announce that I am no longer a PvP virgin.

This Saturday, me and Jeremy ran a level 27 orc hunter all the way down Stonetalon Peak.

He got away. (Paladin and warrior vs. Aspect of the Cheetah... catching runners = no. We did ensure, however, that all he could do is run... like the little Horde girlie-man that he is. :P)

(But Angie! You outnumbered him two to one! And a level 50 mage joined up with you to frost-shock him!)

HUSH! GREAT VICTORY FOR THE ALLIANCE!

Warsong Gulch, here I come!

So! What's going on with me?

I'm being a research assistant for my econ prof

(Props to Dr. Mitch!)

What I'm doing is I'm cross-referencing 19th century marriage records to the 1851 census in Britain, to see if whether adult literacy rate (as determined by whether people sign their marriage license or just X it) matches up with their childhood educational backrounds.

So.. uh.. lots of Excel database stuff, really. And entertaining facets of 19th century life.

I don't think "farmer's widowed pauper" or "spoon polisher" or "pearl button cutter" really flies on resumes anymore. Or "gentleman."

This one time I was reading the job description for this guy, who described himself as a 'inge filer.' I was really confused until I read the other records, in which his son described the filer as being a locksmith.

Apparently he's a hinge filer.

Fuckin' Cockney!

Game on the Brain

Did you hear? Some paladin won the roll on Baron Rivendare's Epic Mount. It's one of the rarest drops in the game. In Character, I wonder how this obscenely lucky lawful-good Holy Knight of the Light, champion of chivalry and justice, is going to justify that pimped-out undead steed named Deathcharger.

• "He was.. uh.. on sale."
• "He's gentle! Really!"
• "Those obsidian horns are for decoration!"

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I have a really hot wallpaper of Arthas Menethil (not Arthas Terenas^*, you fools!) on my desktop. This is one of him back when he's human, not the Death Knight one which proliferates the internet, because frankly I don't want that psychotic smile gleefully Cheshire-catting me every time I start up Windows.

I wonder whose face the artist used for reference?

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Some guy made a replica of Frostmourne. You know you're pretty sad when you have less of a life than Arthas.

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Excerpt from a hilarious editorial honoring Arthas with the Dumbass of the Month Award:

"Quote: "It's time to fight fire with kerosene!"

Key Appearances: Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, because once he's doing the whole Undead bit he's no longer qualifiable.

Qualifications: Poor ability to think out consequences of actions, ignorance of obvious progression, lousy hair, looking half-drunk, not having played Starcraft far enough to pick up on this particular plot twist

Redeeming Point: Really, I have no beef with undead Arthas whatsoever.

Damning Point: This is essentially saying that he's smarter dead than alive.

Inaccurate Statement: "Arthas just didn't know where his path was leading."

Correction: Hmph. Sure. That shit didn't fly with Kerrigan, either."

The rest of it is even more entertaining.

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*Really now. I don't understand why this misnomer persists. Nobody goes around addressing real monarchs by last name, so why start the habit with fictional, computer game ones? You'd feel pretty dumb referring to Queen Elizabeth (I) as "Queen Tudor."

Excessive Profanities

Some fucker on the World of Warcraft forums spoiled Half-Blooded Prince for me.

What's ironic about this is that he had the spoiler in his sig, which I missed completely because I don't read forum sigs anyway. However, some well-intentioned fuckers further down the thread were saying things like, "Hey, you should change your sig," and "You shouldn't post sigs like that here," which, of course, made me curious. So I scrolled back up to read it, like a dumbass fucker.

You fuckers!

Jose Needs to Get In On This Action

Hey guys! Today I found some D&D Style Porn!

It's pretty well-written, actually. And hot.

The author is a developer for White Wolf now.

...

I fear for Stone Mountain.

I was trawling for info about the new The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie, and in the process have discovered that Narnia is pretty much totally ruined for me as a Grown-Up. Ever since I discovered the whole Christian Allegory thing. Not as fun anymore. This is why I think people should read as much as possible when they're kids, because adults just don't get excited about as much.

I remember when I was like 15, 16, and finishing some books that I'd started a few years earlier, or rereading things, and not enjoying them as much, and thinking to myself, "Oh, shit, shit I'm growing up!" Then I'd cram as much reading into my schedule as possible, reading in a passionate, shark-like frenzy (you know, pages and viscera flying everywhere- you've all seen the Discovery Channel) so that I'd finish all my campy juvenile fantasy adventures before I got too old to enjoy them.

Anyway, now I don't like Narnia so much because I keep finding more and more that could possibly offend me. I don't try to look, honest. It's self-defeating. I like enjoying my childhood. But bothersome things just... kind of appear, like those Magic Eye pop-ups I used to not be able to see either.

For example, today I was reading this thing about Susan (oh btw, this whole blog is about the Chronicles of Narnia so if you haven't read them for some Godforsaken reason, go do it) today, and how she didn't die at the end of the series because she needed to repent. I didn't think much about Susan when I read the books as a kid. Oh, she can't come back to Narnia because she acts like a selfish teenager. I didn't think much about it. Really, the only reaction I had was one of vindictive pleasure; I knew too many selfish teenagers even as a kid and was glad girls like them weren't allowed. You know, the mean girls who won't let you sit with them at lunch...

*sniff*...

ANYWAY. Thinking of it now, she seems like a terribly tragic character, not because of what's written about her, but what's not. Here you have this girl, who isn't let into heaven because she's concerned with material things. She's obsessed with makeup and clothes and parties and acting grown up. I feel sorry for her. I can see her in a dark room in England, night-dimmed in the dark lonely countryside, the little tendrils of emotion, of sin and subversion crawling out from her head and over her body, thoughts about boys and new sensations and Nazi bombs falling over this other Eden, turning from a girl to a woman alone, listening to the breathing of her brothers and sister, too young to understand, and how lonely that must have been. She wears lipstick and nylon, the book says, which is why she can't come to Narnia anymore.

Imagine this- Imagine you are a woman of power, gentle and beloved, respected and feared in turn. Imagine you are a queen. Imagine that armies ride out in your name, fleets sail under your banner and a strong west wind, barbarian princes hammer at the gates for your love. You have a splendid castle, a sumptuous table, servants, song, and sword that wait upon you. You are noble and you are wise, and by this your country flourishes in music, wonder and undimmed beauty.

One day, you are hunting in an unfamiliar forest, an aura of foreboding creeping on you like vines. You strain against its power, shying away from it, but your siblings urge you onward, so on you go. With a strange sensation twisting your body and a torrent of alien thoughts, your old life vanishes in an instant. You look down at your arms, not recognizing your body. You stare into a mirror, not recognizing your face. You are a queen no longer. Your country, your home, your people, your friends, your power, your wealth, are gone, and all you are is a scared, vulnerable girl in World War II England as the bombs keep falling, where there is no nobility and no wisdom, only despair and sacrifice. Unlike our memories, you have no photographs, no souvenirs, only what you can grasp in your memory as your memory fades.

When you see your parents again, over a middle-class, English dinner, they seem young to you, younger than you just were. You are powerless again. You, who once commanded a kingdom, must appease two foolish adults, strangers who you have not seen in decades. Initially, they humor you and your childish pretenses at royalty. They humor your pretenses at acting much older than you are, commanding and regal.

Peter takes the mantle of eldest; bossy, annoyingly responsible, and pragmatic. Lucy and Edmund enthusiastically scramble for the next adventure. Only you seem to feel some longing for your past life. Because you are older, your parents tell you that you have a responsibility to act mature, that you're setting a bad example by playing these frivolous games with your younger siblings. Your friends think you're mad. Honestly, how could you have aged to adulthood in a day? Honestly. And you think they're right... Anything like that is completely preposterous, there's no proof, it's all in your head. What silly games you played as a child.

And if what you saw with your own eyes, touched with your own hands, isn't here, never was, then why should you believe in what you can't see, can't touch, isn't here, never was?

Why should you believe in God?

You pretend to move on, socializing yourself to distraction, grasping at phantoms, holding court among your remaining subjects, cliquish girls and lovesick schoolboys. You remember your lost glory that no one else seems to remember, the games you played as a child. Once you were a queen (in those old imaginary games, of course). What are you now? A secretary, a housewife in Cold War Europe? Nothing you can do will rival what you once were.

You are broken. Your entire family died in a railway crash many years ago.

Atheist Summer Camp

@____@

O....kay.

Check out the New York Times article about it that's linked on the site too.

Ah, Patrick Henry College.

Read this. It's freaky.

"God and Country" excerpt:

Patrick Henry’s president, Michael Farris, is a lawyer and minister who has worked for Christian causes for decades. He founded the school after getting requests from two constituencies: homeschooling parents and conservative congressmen. The parents would ask him where they could find a Christian college with a “courtship” atmosphere, meaning one where dating is regulated and subject to parental approval. The congressmen asked him where they could find homeschoolers as interns and staffers, “which I took to be shorthand for ‘someone who shares my values,’ ” Farris said. “And I knew they didn’t want a fourteen-year-old kid.” So he set out to build what he calls the Evangelical Ivy League, and what the students call Harvard for Homeschoolers.

You know what's freaky? These kids have more of a social life than I do now.

:P

To Terrorists: If you hate America, attack America. If you hate our government and our armies and our guns, attack those. We will be waiting for you. Don’t attack our friends, people who have nothing to do with our war, people who are good and decent or maybe not, but don’t deserve to die. Don’t attack our colleagues. Don’t attack our relatives, our children, our teachers, our scientists, our doctors, the people who make a city live and breathe.

Today should have been happy. Today should have been about the Olympics, a global event, though a flawed event, a celebration of peace. And for the first time in years, leaders of great countries were arming themselves against poverty, disease, and ignorance. There is urgency to it now.

To G8: don’t stop until the horror is over, don’t stop until the rage is over, don’t stop until the despair is over, don’t stop for anything because more than ever we need you.

To the people of London from the people of America: We love you as our own. God bless you, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Peace be with you, wherever you go.

Because We Love Bono

I'm an econ major and I've been hoping for G8 to succeed for a long time now. What is G8? Well, it's a summit of eight developed countries around the world deciding how to combat global poverty and environmental depredation. They're trying to do it by getting debt cancellation for third world countries and dedicating 0.7 percent of gross national product (among developed countries) for foreign aid. For those of you who are going "Huh?" basically this means that every one hundred dollars you spend, seven cents goes overseas. Currently, at least for the US, only 0.18 percent of GNP goes overseas, or ... 1.8 cents per $100. To put *that* into perspective, that's $15 billion dollars for foreign aid per year compared to $450 billion dollars for military expenditure. $15 billion dollars for all of Africa. Our $15 billion dollars is $12 per sub-Saharan African per year. That means you could probably buy an African like... a t-shirt. 0.7 percent of GNP would be $70 per African per year, which could buy them safe water, anti-malarial and anti-AIDs drugs, contraception, the beginning of investment in improved farming, like, say, fertilizer and irrigation. The village could afford, oh, a truck.

Another thing to think about: The top 400 richest people in the US put together earn 69 billion dollars. The combined citizenry of Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria and Senegal earn.. $57 billion. So basically the 400 richest people in the US earn more than 161 million people in Africa.

It's about time for G8.

You know what's really wrong? My local library has the Cliff notes version of Paradise Lost but not the real thing.