How to Age Gracelessly

Milestone hurrah! Or some other exclamation of pseudo-jubilation. This post makes the 50 in Spiral Reverie total now. Never thought I'd make it this far, did you? Hoped and dreamed that I would give this whole "blorging" thing up, eh? Too bad. I'm never going away. Not even if you pay me. (Note: If you pay me, it might help.) Anyway, it feels like an accomplishment in and of itself to me, having found this much to babble about here and there, now and then, since the blog formally launched in early July last year. At this rate, you can expect me to hit post 100 by... roughly early February 2009. Let the salivation in fear and trepidation begin. (Or anticipation, I suppose, should you somehow actually enjoy these ramblings. Somehow.)

So here we are, mid-April. Everything is covered in yellow and it's an entirely miserable time of year for me. My allergies are running at an all time high, like a runaway freight train powered by economic anxiety and also probably some coal too because dirty energy's getting to be cool again these days, or so the far right's claiming. (Next thing we know, the black lung will be a fashion statement! Or maybe not. Maybe.) As the northern hemisphere revives from winter (Not that we had much of one, as usual. And it's been spring for a good while now anyway - we're slowly making that painful transition into summer here now, otherwise known as the season that ate EVERYTHING.), the birds burst into rapturous song and flowers explode into colorful bloom, blasting anything and everything with pollen. And though we've seen some nice - and much needed - rain here and there, it hasn't been enough to stave off that dreaded yellow flowery taint creeping across the country and making those of us allergic to it wish we were dead. (And generally hope that we can find some medication that'll help without making us too tired or screwing up our sleep too much. Three cheers for pharmaceuticals.)

Of course, like any season, spring brings birthdays. People get to enjoy tacking extra digits onto their age, pointing to the calendar, and loudly exclaiming "NOW I'M THIS MANY!" This stops being remotely cute or amusing by the time you hit puberty, and you will be beaten with extreme prejudice if you insist upon continuing this behavior pattern. What are you, six!?

Many significant individuals were born around this time of the year. Like Conan O'Brien, host of Late Night - and soon taking over the Tonight Show when Jay Leno steps down in 2009 - whose birthday is today. And the ghost of Hitler, who ages on sunday - otherwise recognized as the infamous "4/20" on which the world's potheads celebrate the attempted extermination of the Jews, homosexuals, and other individuals who make the world a more interesting and varied place by smoking all the pot they can and trying to make contact with the ghost of Jerry Garcia. Some day, you guys, someday. (And this year it's also an excuse for G4 to give me a reason to watch it once again with the special episode of Code Monkeys they made for it, given the frequency of drug humor on the show. Now they just need to get some official season 2 announcements out already. It's rather nice having new episodes of entirely scripted dramas and comedies to watch again, post-strike. The Office, Scrubs, Reaper, and Battlestar Galactica are keeping me entertained, anyway, aside from the usual Daily Show, Colbert, and Conan.)

Of course, with all this horrible pollen making me miserable and all these other key birthdays popping up, I suppose it's somewhat worth noting that I age-up, as it were, this coming Saturday. What better time to age and be reminded of how much life's been passing me by, after all? I'll finally be stumbling into my mid-twenties - though granted, the earliest of the mid-twenties years - and as you can tell, I couldn't be more pleased.

Aging has its upsides and its downsides. On one hand, it makes it easier to dismiss the youthful follies of the past, to laugh at my own stupid decisions and mistakes and think to myself, "Hey, look how much I've grown since then! I wouldn't even consider something that stupid now!" Then it usually hits me about a second and a half later that I don't have any room to talk now anyway. (No one putting so much into such a hopeless unrequited love novel project like this has any right to think themselves anything but a fool, let's face it.)

There's plenty of less than wonderful things about tacking that extra year onto the old age bulletin board (I'm sure you all have one of these too, or at least an enchanted abacus that counts down the number of years until your demise. I don't know what I'd do without mine.) as well. Aging tends to warrant reflection on one's life. And looking back, high school sucked, college was fascinating and educational, but nothing spectacular, nothing like people make college out to be. (But then, according to pop culture, all you do is get drunk and high and "get yo fuck on" or whatever people are saying these days. I did none of these things, the former two not interesting me, personally, having plenty of fun with friends while sober, and the latter largely a matter of a lack of meeting and connecting with anybody of the opposite sex with any level to things beyond simple, enjoyable platonic friendship. I'd say the unrequited love thing played a part, but that only really hit me hard about halfway in - I thought I was over her for a long time, after all - and I simply never met anybody I found myself particularly attracted to. For all that cheesy INFP "emotional sensitivity" I deal with, I have a hard time really being attracted to anybody beyond noticing someone, thinking "Hey, she's kinda cute," and leaving it at that.) Now I've been a graduate for about four months, and I've been out of classes for nearly a year, having finished all my academic requirements for graduation up last May. Time does have a way of flying. Not unlike the toasters on that old Windows 3.1 screensaver. (Admit it, you were waiting for someone to drop that reference on the "blarghosphere." ... See what I did there? How witty "blargosphere" is? It's okay to like it.)

Post-graduate life is kind of sad, reflecting on where many people my own age are in their lives. I know, you aren't supposed to look at other people's lives and compare them to your own - you have to find your own way, walk your own path instead of trying to follow the beaten road and be like everybody else. But it's still hard not to laugh at myself at this point. I'm going into my mid twenties, and after graduating, I just moved back home. (Doesn't help that the job market is a mess as the economy continues to collapse and I'd be miserable in most jobs anyway, the way I function on many levels. Not too easy out there in that thar "real world" when you're an awkward introvert who doesn't have much in the way of job skills - and a BA isn't worth much of anything in the professional world these days anyway. I'd lose my mind in a corporate office, and most things are either too externally oriented or reliant upon people skills to do anything but drain the life out of me. And thus, I've kept my focus on my novel and am hoping to make it into a grad school Creative Writing program in New England starting in January - with any luck, getting this first novel published and my writing career launched over the remainder of this year and picking up a higher-level degree.) With the circle of friends I socialized with having largely disbanded by the end of college - I was practically entirely shut out, only really hearing from friends on the occasion I'd run into them on campus or at one of the club events they ran, like game nights, since I always kept to the periphery anyway - and now we're all scattered about. I'm back home in Raleigh, others are still out in Charlotte, finishing school and figuring out what they want to do next, while others yet - the ones I usually hung out with most - are scattering across the globe, mostly to Asia - Japan and China in particular. So this isolation I've been dealing with for about two years now? Not exactly a blast, though I can't complain too much, considering that parting ways with friends is just part of the whole "growing up" thing that comes with post-college life. Doesn't make it any less fun, though. Haven't I done enough of this "coming of age" crap already!? I already know life sucks! (This intentionally over the top sophomoric outburst brought to you by McDonald's: Fight off sadness with morbid obesity and adult diabetes!)

Despite that I know I'm still living my own life, obviously, and not anybody else's - rather than taking their way, I'm trying this whole serious dedicating-one's-life-to-writing thing, after all, which is full of its own difficulties, like any other life (Unless you're filthy stinking rich and have a talking gorilla butler. In which case, I hope you get hit by a bus.) - it's hard not to have some misgivings. This, of course, can largely be blamed on that I've made the mistake of reading a recent discussion thread on post-college life on the SomethingAwful.com forums. As you can imagine, it makes adult life in general look depressing. So many people get sucked into this depressing void of simply getting up, going to work, maybe going to the gym, coming home and eating some dinner, watching some TV, playing a game for a bit, or messing around on the internet, then sleep and repeat, day in and day out. This is the kind of hollow, hellish 9-5 trap the very thought of being sucked into utterly terrifies me. I couldn't see really wanting to continue my own life if that's all I had. I'm not exactly a ray of sunshine to begin with, and a life like that would quickly beat me down until I had no motivation left to speak of. And even many of these people have things to enjoy for it that I sure as hell don't. Their own place, for instance, which I'm hoping to manage one way or another in grad school, actual money, which I hope to at least make a small amount of my first novel, and such. Not to mention relationships - usually, people seem to cut the "let's just sleep together and devalue intimacy as much as possible" crap commonplace in high school and college and start really pursuing serious relationships by then. By my age, it's not exactly uncommon for people to have had at least several serious relationships. It's kind of depressing getting to this point in your life and seeing how many of your peers are getting married when you still haven't been in a relationship with anybody who actually liked you, frankly.

Your teenage years are made out to be something incredible, as you only live them once - mine weren't. Those were actually pretty terrible years for me. Same with the early twenties and college in general, go wild, you're only young once! - not for me! And by one's mid-twenties, in leading a life like this, it's hard not to suddenly start becoming more acutely aware of your age and feel like you've missed out on a hell of a lot that you won't get like everybody else seems to during those glorious late teens/early twenties, and even resent the people those sorts of things seemed to come to easily a bit. (Even though a number of those things were matters I had no actual interest in, and still don't. Though getting out of here and having a relationship that isn't terrible for once would be pretty fantastic. My expectations are low enough as is, as ambitiously high as I'm aiming with this unrequited love novel gesture - I can't expect success, though. I've never had that kind of luck, after all. Especially the kind to back up a long shot like this.) In reading a thread like that on people's normal experiences in post-college life, though, it was rather easy to realize how much you've missed and haven't come close to what people enjoy now at your age. If we had a basement, it might be time for me to move down there and roll a 1d20 saving throw vs. failing at life. (Yes, the D&D joke was necessary.)

And so, it's spring. Everything's been coated by a tidal wave of pollen, and it's a relatively hellish time of the year to celebrate aging. I need to move up north already.

Considering, though, that I haven't really had a birthday celebration (To the point at which my birthday was nothing more than just another day in recent years, with a slightly depressing tone to it.) since I turned 18 back in 2002, shortly before high school graduation, this Saturday should be interesting, if not a little surreal for me. (Though I did spend my birthday evening last year at a rather high budget student theatrical performance of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, which was an interesting way to spend it. Even if I just bought my ticket and went for extra credit in my theater class that semester.) In the least, I'm sure I'll appreciate the whole cake-and-presents thing more than ever. I probably won't be able to enjoy it many more times before it simply becomes and stays just another unremarkable day of the year, after all. Very little in life lasts, so you've got to enjoy what you can while you can.

For soon, we shall be dead.

(Now that's how you end a blog post on aging. Right? Right? High five, anybody?)

This Educational Experience brought to you by Corporate America

This one probably won't be too long, but with the personal concern it draws, there was no not writing on this subject.

Everything in this world is a commodity, there is nothing that lacks monetary value. Health care, food, seal pelts, first love, you, I, education. We're all commodities - walking, talking crates full of crap to slap a price tag on, to buy and sell until you're frothing at the mouth on some internet forum about how Ron Paul should be president - all of us. At least, this is what the hardcore libertarians would have us believe. Pretty crazy, right? Stripping all real meaning out of life and society and dumbing us down until we're nothing but commodities, products unto ourselves, and life is nothing more than a series of sales and purchases. Property rights are #1! These philosophies are essentially advocating a life of shallow materialism and nothing more. The market dictates what is right and wrong - the market dictates everything that matters, all that you see and seem. Bow down and worship at the altar of free market capitalism. Read Ayn Rand and accept Objectivism as your personal M.O. in this world, and look down your nose at anybody who disagrees with this approach to life - they just don't understand. (Somewhere along the way, you're also going to have to pretend that the market actually cares about individuals, and that it isn't going to essentially cannibalize the lower classes while favoring the wealthy and giving corporations near-absolute control in society. If your opinions and views don't conform with what the free market dictates - you're wrong.)

Fortunately, most people aren't quite that bad. (Rand's philosophy of glorifying selfishness, greed, and general self-absorption as admirable traits - beloved as it is by libertarians, with how much it has in common with their politics - has a hard time catching on, as much as its message could potentially thrive in modern America, in large part thanks to the fact that she was an incredibly bad writer. I may not even be published yet - and looking at all the garbage that gets published every year, publishing isn't a definite barometer of quality of writing - or particularly overconfident or egotistical in regards to my writing (As much as this satirically intended comment is going to make it seem otherwise - if I had more faith in people's ability to pick up on satire when they read it, I wouldn't feel the need for this disclaimer in the midst of this over-long parenthetical aside.), I can say with confidence that even I can write more interesting and compelling stories than Rand. My interests don't lie in writing brain-numbing two-dimensional literary rants with flat characters and plotlines conceived solely to push an entirely hollow philosophy - that effectively serves to glorify some of the worst traits people often possess - through strawman arguments and a simple "I'm right, everyone else is wrong" approach. It's intellectually and humanistically disingenuous, after all - not to mention downright insulting to anybody you're trying to sell on your philosophy as an adult capable of thinking for themselves.)

And as such, people like Ron Paul, though worshiped by half the internet, are mocked by the rest. You won't win friends by trying to argue that we're all commodities - especially when historically, this is something we as a species tend to strongly disagree with these days, slavery not exactly being looked well upon historically (Except by white supremacists, anyway, and theirs is not a perspective that holds any positive value in the modern world.) - nor trying to argue that rights we tend to appreciate should be commodified as well. (It's hard to take a political group seriously when you've seen its members trying to seriously argue against the FDA on the grounds that "We should have the right to eat whatever we want, no matter how unhealthy! Let the market decide which foods are manufactured in unsanitary conditions and which medications will kill us!" When the right to clog your arteries with trans-fats is a concern, your politics are not exactly relevant to the real world the rest of us live in. Especially considering that if asked, most people would no doubt say they'd prefer to eat healthier to begin with, so long as the food tasted good. I'm not entirely sure what it is that gives extreme conservatives the fetish you see here and there for attacking public health.) Health care should not be about money (If you ask the average American whether they'd like inexpensive to free, quality health care without bringing up that dirty, dirty word "socialism" that the right likes to associate with the "evils" of the world," you'd get pretty much the same response from everybody. Medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy for a reason, after all.), public education should not be privatized and commodified either (Education is a right, and absolutely necessary in order to maintain a true, modern society - a society which does not value education and intelligence is doomed to fall. To make education a privilege is to cultivate a society where intelligence is vilified - and intellectualism is looked down on far too often here in America as is, thanks to the right (See: the entire Bush/Gore election) - and ultimately create a society that cannot sustain itself in a meaningful fashion. A populace to be manipulated.), and the environment is not a commodity either - you can harvest all those natural resources you want, but they're all limited, and the more you do, the more you strip away at the core of our planet in the sole interest of corporate profits. These politics and this philosophy tie well into the typical conservative stance of "If you care about the environment, you're a dirty socialist hippie and destroying our nation." Something we see broadly between both the libertarians and Republicans - despite the libertarians' efforts to often paint themselves as socially liberal and economically conservative, Ron Paul himself is basically an extreme Republican who's only popular because he wants to pull out of Iraq. (After all, why vote for a candidate who'd at least try to start undoing some of the Bush administration's damage in addition to withdrawing from the Middle East - where our "surge" has failed, and it is impossible to achieve the "victory" the administration continues to insist that we can, with the military outright kowtowing to far right interests, politicized as it has become, taboo as I know it is to say of the military - when you can just vote for an anti-war Republican? He's a doctor!)

Socially commodifying politics are not liberal as they paint them, either - they're simply a matter of, once again, the free market!!! Like having that whole right of choice, ladies? You won't get a say anymore if enough loud conservative groups get the public to agree to ban it in your area. (Fun Fact: According to libertarians, local governments should handle everything and the nation should be effectively split into a series of commodified city-states rather than a unified nation where any one thing is universal beyond money. Why agree on universal rights, even if they're controversial, when we can just let locals decide on them? Don't like gays or black people? Get a lobby together and pressure your local government to throw them out! Mmm, that's good free market oppression!) In a commodified society, corporate interests are king. In an obsessively capitalist society (When we aren't even as free market capitalist as we like to pretend - we just like to give tax breaks and extra helping hands to major corporations thanks to groups like the tobacco lobby. Why support improved, more-leftist economic policies mixing aspects of the free market and a controlled economy to help farmers and small businesses while entering trade agreements that benefit the world's poor when we can give badmouth leftist economic ideas while using many of these same ideas in the worst way imaginable - through corrupt trade agreements and giving handouts to the already-massively-successful corporations who don't need them?), with such interests ruling, the interests of the people are marginalized - you get a playing field groomed for a conservative wet dream to flourish. (Except said dreams are not compatible with reality and would lead to widespread poverty and far deeper problems tearing the nation apart from the inside, the likes of which would put even the Great Depression to shame.) Civil rights? Personal freedoms? Unionization/Workers' rights? These are not conservative values. The potential for groups to lobby for local legal gay marriage does not a liberal stance on social values make. And contrary to Randian philosophy and libertarian politics, no, not everything of value in life can be obtained by working hard and making money. (Even if you're working long, abusive hours and the pay is terrible. You should feel lucky to be employed, striking is a communist move! If you don't like your job, find a means to improve your market value so someone else will employ you! ... I feel dead inside after writing that sentence, and I've read enough serious arguments to that end online before as is.)

At any rate, getting to the point, my alma mater the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, is known for making bad, conservative decisions that certainly don't favor the students. (Even in the last month of my final semester in Spring '07, they attempted to get every student they could on campus to install software to scan their computers for mp3s to report directly to the RIAA - essentially telling students, yes, "Do us a favor and turn yourselves in to the RIAA, we're not particularly interested in sticking up for you, and we don't care if you graduate, so hey, bring some lawsuits on yourself!" The majority of the RIAA's targets have been college students who aren't in much of a position to put up a legal defense to their painfully gray-area legal bullying, and UNCC does not particularly care for their students over a corrupt recording industry organization's efforts to attack students, outright assisting them. In addition to this, they allowed the RIAA to begin monitoring the entire student network from then on, annihilating what privacy there was in students' internet connections then, in order to keep an eye for mp3 downloads on the off-chance that they could find someone pirating music, as commonplace as that still is, and as overexaggerated as the RIAA's claims of mp3 piracy-related losses are.) The latest in these decisions amounts to letting the school's curriculum be bought by corporate interests - in this case, specifically, BB&T corp. - with the agreement to push and forcibly incorporate Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged into the curriculum as required reading for students. (Several other universities agreed to the same contemptible deal.) No matter how you look at it, it's entirely academically unethical and a failure in responsibly respecting students' academic freedoms and interests in lieu of being paid to push a specific agenda. Of all the ways a university could look to raise money, this would be amongst the worst. (And UNCC has a history of not exactly using their money all that well, no less. I'd like to be able to look back on my alma mater and have nothing but praise for it like you're expected to, but that would be dishonest of me - the dorms were veritable ratholes, and the quality of food on campus was abysmal. I could go to a cafeteria in my freshman year, back when Sodexho still ran the dining services in 2002-2003, and actually not feel sick after eating there. Later in 2003, from then on, they switched over to Chartwells (No doubt in a costcutting move, they don't exactly have a glowing reputation across the country.), at which point, there were no more meals in the cafeteria that would make one think "I'm glad I ate that." The only welcomed additions to dining in the remainder of my time there were sushi on campus and this small Chinese place in the Student Activity Center, where I ended up getting lunches from regularly. UNCC does not have a track record, though, of making decisions in the interests of the student body - not in their health, in the switch to Chartwells and the stink students raised over that, not in their living conditions, considering how bad the dorms were, and sure as hell not their rights either, looking at their interactions with the RIAA. This Ayn Rand decision is yet another in a long line of fuck-yous they've handed down to their students. That said, as much as the UNCC administration and handling of things disgusts me, I can't tear down every aspect of the school - there's a lot of good programs, interesting courses, and respectable professors there, so while the administration has earned naught but my ire, I do look back on my five years there thinking positively in regards to having taken many worthwhile and interesting courses and learned from many professors I think well of.)

The Ayn Rand Institute (Institute of Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!) is playing this deal up as something to be praised - claiming value in Rand's absolutist ethics. The very concept of absolutism in something like ethics is laughable and utterly intellectually dishonest. Absolutism in all its forms amounts to one thing - dumbing down and oversimplifying everything as so to avoid having to think. The "hey, how 'bout that black and white?" take on things. And the field of ethics is absolutely one of the last fields where absolutism has a place. In my final semester, I actually took an ethics course myself - which made me regret not studying philosophy further, I may look into some philosophy courses when I make it into grad school - in which we looked at many, many different types of ethics and philosophies. (And what's more fun than wrapping your brain around Kant's Deontology and defining the categorical imperative on exams?) There were plenty of somewhat-absolutistic philosophies, sure, but they were far more well thought out than Rand's. And many more philosophies properly took all the gray areas in life into account, which made it hard to make any kind of absolute ethical judgment calls - these philosophies, of course, are far more compatible with reality, as life isn't and never will be black and white. Rand's philosophy, however, is so poorly developed and two-dimensional strawman argument-centric that it's practically a mockery of legitimate philosophy. Objectivism is in and of itself a philosophy that thrives on glorifying the worst in humanity. It figures that only now when the libertarians are louder than ever on the internet - when again, it isn't the average person whom free-market capitalism works in favor of - and with Rand's books' sales slumping even more than ever (Rightly so.) that corporations would seek to wedge Rand's self-righteous anti-free thought (When Rand speaks of "rational" thought, she tends to mean "this is how I frame my way of thinking - think like me or you're wrong.") literary masturbation into public education. Some schools get it, given Yale professor Harold Bloom's (Not even so astute, given how obvious it is) observation that Rand "could not write her way out of a paper bag." Not to mention that - as I've harped on many times here - her ideas were far too shallow to build a course around. (Let alone a real, meaningful philosophy. Objectivism is just a means by which selfish, self-interested individuals can rationalize their behavior without feeling guilty. Real altruism is almost unheard of in this world, but as little faith in humanity as I have - most of us at least have some capacity for caring for others over ourselves. This is a trait that should never stop being valued.)

BB&T should be publicly criticized, and universities reprimanded for this. To set this precedent in commodifying education, these schools' academic integrity itself is undermined, and it's a blatant betrayal of the student body. (Again, in no way the first time at UNCC.) It's bad literature, it's bad philosophy, and it holds no real academic value. There's no meaningful discussion stirred up by Rand's ideas - just the same old argument of selfishness versus generosity, "I want to feel good about looking out for number one" versus "I'd rather put others over myself and care about people." A fundamental argument of human nature, but by no means one we need to be debating in our schools - the day we start seeing self-absorption praised or accepted as a potentially good quality, we're in trouble. And with this precedent set in higher education, it's always certainly possible that we'll start seeing Rand's "literature" pushed into public education as well - to be read by far more impressionable teenagers who in many cases may not technically be capable of reasoning enough to know better than to believe in Rand's, to be vulgar, bullshit. (The human brain doesn't really reach its full development capacity until the early twenties, after all. It would essentially be proselytizing the youth in many cases.)

Of course, this is by no means the first and in no way the only incident we're seeing of corporate interests pushing themselves on schools. However, this stands out in that it's an attempt at pushing in moral and ethical propaganda on the students, as opposed to merely making them use one piece of software or another, or study one thing or another they focus on.

In short, not cool, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, not cool. Year after year, you continue to sell out your academic and intellectual integrity. You want to be #3 in North Carolina, behind Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill, so desperately? Fucking over your students and pulling stunts like this will not accomplish this. All you will do is damage your own reputation and integrity while making alumni like myself ashamed to be associated. Corporate interests are not student interests. As long as corporate interests remain a major priority to you guys up there on top, you will not be a respectable university. Either students come first, or they aren't a real priority at all. There's a reason people go to college, after all. (Hint: It's not just about getting stupid-drunk every night, banging a few loose people and starting a VD collection, then dropping out like the media plays it up as. Many of us do actually value our educations and want to learn. Letting a corporation set a curriculum is anti-education.) Having had plenty of good professors at UNCC, I have just enough faith in them that at least a few of them, I'd hope, would inform their students about why they're being forced to read Ayn Rand, and ultimately help to tear Objectivism apart in the classroom.

Unfortunately, when we're seeing schools stoop to things like this for money - public universities, no less - it says something again about where education is in our country, as public services go.

Hey, it ended up being longer than I thought. Fancy that. Once you get me going on a political tangent, it's hard to shut me up. (Here's hoping the rant didn't make any of your brains bleed.)

Life like Frames in a Film Reel

Is this blog dead!?

NO! It's just sleeping. Or it was, anyway. Novel-writing and all that. I've run out of steam, motivation, and topics to write on in regards to my usual content in here, which you all know and love. (As reflected by the few of you who remember this place exists, haha.)

Basically, this is gonna be a short one, just to get warmed up again for blogging more in April. And with that, I'm introducing a new subject. This is a pretty all-purpose personal writer-guy blog anyway, so I figure I can get away with adding whatever sorts of new content I feel like - and besides, some of it might be of interest to more readers or something, as well. Can't just write about life and love and such all the time - especially when I haven't had enough topics to write on in that regard anyway, lacking in inspiration as I have been.

So rather than boring you all with another retarded comedy piece (I'm sure I'll come up with something to that capacity later this month anyway.), I hereby introduce This Jackass Talks Movies! Yes, I know what you're thinking (As I always say, in all my predictability) - whaddaya mean movie-talk!? This guy knows nothing! Very Socratic of you. But you remember what they did to Socrates in the end - and it had nothing to do with puppies. Think before you speak when facing my horrific oppressive regime here in relatively-unread-blog-country. (Where the law requires the wearing of bowler hats and at least three monocles at all times.) I've taken a few film courses in my time and turned into a pretty huge independent/art house and foreign film junkie in the past half-decade or so anyway, and I figure I may as well start a regular-ish feature for content focusing on another hobby I'm good at talking about - one that'd probably be more accessible to the average internet-goer. (I've kind of avoided blogging too heavily on video games largely to avoid driving off the disinterested, admittedly, while I try to blog about those - when I do - from an angle non-gamers could read and understand, at least. It can be a pretty insulated hobby, practically a subculture unto itself on the internets.)

I would've given it a more focused name - like maybe "Movies You've Never Heard Of!" - but that sounds kind of pretentious anyway. And I'm sure I'll run out of movies nobody's heard of to talk about after a while.

What could I be starting with? None other than Van Flesher, Randy Mack, and Zack Ordynans' Burning Annie. Given that it was released on 2004, never saw much theatrical distribution to speak of, isn't exactly easily found everywhere on DVD, and still has less than 200 votes on the IMDB (And a total star score that really isn't a good indicator of its quality, as a result of their rather unbalanced mean calculated scoring system.) four years after being made, I'd say it qualifies pretty well as a film most people have never heard of. Of course, to get a bit more of a glance at it, you may want to view the trailer.

In its essence, the film itself is a love poem to Woody Allen films. Gary Lundy leads the relatively small to no-name cast (Which works to the film's benefit, as it can when a less-identifiable cast of genuine talent is assembled - it can make a cast even more believable as their characters. Something many big Hollywood celebrities can't pull off in films, especially their own vehicles - but then, a great many stars in Hollywood aren't exactly good actors, per se.), pretty much only identifiable before (To me at least) from a small supporting role in Donnie Darko. He plays Max, a fairly traditional sort of Woody Allen archetype brought to a modern college setting (Though exactly how modern is a little hard to discern. I'm under the impression that it was set sometime in the late '90s, given that the N64 was the video game console of choice for the group of friends the film focuses on, and an NES and SNES are visible in the background in their suite as well.), hopeless and cynical as you'd expect. He hangs out with his friends whom he shares a suite with in the dorm (The film itself actually filmed on a real West Virginia college campus and providing a far better and more realistic portrayal of college than most.), has his own college radio show at the dead of the night that nobody listens to, and little faith in humanity, love, and himself. Practically raised on Woody Allen films, he says, and hooked on Annie Hall, he has, as they put it, "a love-hate relationship with love and hate."

As the film progresses, Max attempts a relationship with a friend, Beth, and watches it crash and burn quickly, leaving them to attempt to salvage their friendship with the occasional conversation. Max doesn't know how to let his own guard down, facing a constant clash within himself between his outer defensive smartass that plays everything off with a witty remark or crack of some sort or another and his true, unguarded self - who isn't actually a bad person, just someone afraid to let his guard down and be hurt. He'd rather play video hockey and watch Annie Hall than really live in the moment - something I can admittedly relate to greatly - in his life. After the collapse with Beth, Max meets another young woman, Julie - played well both as a believable person and Woody Allen style character by Sara Downing - who listened to his radio show on Beth's recommendation. The two cross paths several times on campus as time passes and Max watches his friends fall in and out of relationships, sitting back and making cynical comments all the while. The two eventually begin a fumbling relationship while he and his friends speculate that watching Annie Hall was a curse on their relationships, and noticing similarities between Julie and the character of Annie herself - making Max all the more insecure and uncertain of what he feels and wants.

The rest of the film, not to be spoiled, plays out in fairly traditional Woody Allen fashion - realistically, in this case, anyway - and enjoyably, overall. Everyone in their cast plays their roles well, some characters not getting fleshed out quite as much as one would like, but all avoiding being completely two-dimensional archetypes. (Save for bit characters, anyway, like a stoner and unpleasant frat boy that appear in a fairly early scene.) The soundtrack - pretty much all artists I didn't recognize - doesn't particularly stand out, but it complements the film well, working as a believable accompaniment to a modern college film. (They probably recognized that they would've been stretching it, had they gone so far in their homage to using a primarily jazz soundtrack, as Allen's films tend to.) The film itself is undeniably low budget - in watching where the camera goes and what it does and the quality of the cinematography itself, it's very obvious that they didn't have much to work with in the way of funding. That said, it doesn't take away from the film, either. Many classic Woody Allen shots and techniques - including very frequent breaking of the fourth wall to have characters view others' fuck-ups they weren't there to witness firsthand and comment, stepping right out of scenes, and talking directly to the viewers in monologue - are well integrated, and some Allen-esque color-tinting at times goes a long way in contributing to the visual feel of the film. The visuals wouldn't grab you anyway, though, being set at a real college, without any of the bells and whistles Hollywood tries to hang on college locales - there's certainly no faulting Burning Annie for its honesty there.

The real star of the film, though, is its script. Consistently biting and witty, it would definitely make Woody Allen proud. (And for the sake of the filmmakers, one can only hope he'd at least hear about it sometime, considering how few people seem to be aware of the existence of this movie. I lucked out with that Hollywood Video used movie bin. You never know what kind of gold you'll find there.) There's a lot of great fourth-wall breaking moments, social commentary, and pop culture references. (From several scenes spent with the characters sitting around playing N64 games and talking Kevin Smith movies, and even one such scene discussing how pop culture references are a cheap move in cinema, and how that if there lives were a movie, it would be downright terrible.) There's some real emotional resonance there, though it isn't hugely deep - it focuses on being more honest about relationships than warming or breaking the viewer's heart, and makes plenty of good points about love and relationships in college - and Lundy certainly plays a sympathetic, likable protagonist in Max. The film's conclusion won't blow you away or enlighten you, but it'll leave you with a satisfied feeling, having just viewed a worthwhile film with a smart, funny script. And all-in-all, it's the script first and foremost that makes Burning Annie worth seeing.

In short, if you're a Woody Allen fan, make a point of seeing Burning Annie. It shouldn't be too hard to find online, and considering its obscurity and the amount of talent involved in the film - while not without its flaws, it's a very well crafted Woody Allen style comedy/drama - it's certainly well worth seeing. These guys deserve more attention, and I certainly hope they get more chances to continue making indie art house flicks like this. It certainly beats out the average Hollywood dreck any day.

And thus, that concludes the first of my little cinema talk posts. Hopefully it was interesting enough, as I'm going to continue to focus on highlighting obscure films first and foremost, just for the sake of some more interesting content here and giving these movies the attention they deserve. There's a lot of good movies out there that just never get noticed.

The Non-Adventures of Ernest and Vernal Equinox

I haven't written entries here much this month. You've been in and out of rehab each week, trying to cope, I know. You figure "hey, I guess he's given up on this thing, I can finally get clean!" But you'd be wrong to think that - as you know - since I've had to babble once a week to keep you hooked on the smack - er, blog. And that's okay. This is America (At least where I'm writing this.), and planet Earth (Gotta be all-inclusive.), and to not have some sort of unhealthy addiction - that wouldn't merely be unamerican, you could say it's even entirely unearthlinglike. You don't want to be mistaken for one of those space aliens, do you? You know, the ones they always say are abducting people and making Sigmund Freud proud. You don't want to be one of those - word is, all they ever do is get high and look at asses. They're the underachievers of the universe. (Which is something, considering that those Earth-creatures haven't even figured out that simple loophole to exceed light speed in space travel. Always forgetting to carry the two, sheesh.)

Anyway, obviously, it's been nearly another full week since that last one, which flopped pretty epically. Ah well. Since then, the Vernal Equinox has passed, and thus, it now spring. Spring! When a young man's fancy turns to love then it turns out just to be lust and things don't last till summer - leaving room for one of those fanciful "summer romances" where you pretend to love each other for less than 100 days, then realize it was just skin cancer because you didn't stay out of the sun! What a glorious time of the year it is, jumping between irritatingly warm temperatures and more pleasant, cooler days at a brain-scramblingly unpredictable tempo. We've seen some nice rain here and there around here, though we're still dealing with drought conditions and no sign of an end to them before summer hits and everything dries out even more. Meanwhile, the weather's been pretty crazy everywhere else in its own way. If New England and the Midwest aren't getting hit with huge blizzards - blizzards that I admit I'm quite envious of, and look forward to whenever I hopefully get up there next year - they're getting drowned by floods, as the Midwest presently is. It's hard to decide if I envy everyone in Illinois and all dealing with that. It'd be fantastic to see an end to the drought conditions here, but a surplus to the point of water damaging everything is, to put it lightly, less than ideal. Though knowing North Carolinians, as soon as we shake off these drought conditions - however many years that take - we'll celebrate by going right back to overusing our water resources and learn nothing from this whole ordeal. But then, most of us don't seem to be learning anything, anyway.

If you've been curious about the reasoning behind my not pummeling you with random entries here this month - and it's not just a matter of feeling uninspired as to blogging topics lately, though granted, that's a part of it - I thought you should know that it's a matter of my being productive in regards to other matters. I don't exactly want to be one of those aspiring novelists who talks about finishing and publishing a novel forever, after setting up a writing blog online like this, and never goes through with it. And I've been working on this novel for over two years now. It's been growing, evolving with its cast of characters and the events they experience aboard the phantasmal train chugging down the Kettenkrad Line. The book has been nearly complete for a good while now, through my usual non-linear writing style - as I tend to jump back and forth between linear and non-linear writing - it keeps things interesting, and my mental processes fresh. I'd say it's preferable to sit down and go through a story from multiple perspectives, to look at it as something complicated and three-dimensional, and a non-linear approach to writing works well that way, I feel. Then you can go back through it and figure out how to best string everything together in a linear manner so that the reader will actually be able to sit down and read the story and actually understand what they're reading. From discombobulated ideas with subtle connections to an ideally rich narrative through which you connect all the non-linear concepts and plot twists. This approach is probably somewhat eccentric, though. In having read other established and aspiring novelists' conversations about their approaches to writing online, this sort of method doesn't seem to be the status quo. At any rate, I've been working hard every night to finish completed packet after packet of chapters for my test readers, with the goal of finishing the novel 100% by the end of April - a goal that is certainly within reach, at the rate I'm going. As such, that has my full attention over coming up with topics to write about here - I'm probably getting to be a bit overdue for another love/relationship musing post anyway, those seem to do well enough, ironically for someone who's only had bad relationships like myself - and I probably won't be writing quite as frequently here until the book is complete and I've begun the agent-querying process by later spring. That's not to say that I won't at least try to write at least one entry a week here, though. I just need to find more inspiration, more interesting topics that I can babble about until you realize "Hey, this guy's a nutjob with nothing interesting to say." Or at least, that most people conclude that somewhere along the way is what my traffic numbers seem to be telling me - not that it's any good to focus on those as a blogger either. Profiticate your blog for moneys! Hold up Google Ads at gunpoint as though you were knocking over a bank while learning how to please your woman with your own Ronco Ultra Death Ray for payments of $29.99 for just 3,127 months! You can't lose!

These seasons, though, they do indeed change. Time passes, and life, for me, is admittedly pretty monotonous until I get this book published - ideally within the year, hopefully reaching my spring 2009 goal, unrealistic as it probably is, given my additional aspirations with what the novel stands for in its dedication - or I at least make it into a grad school Creative Writing program. But I do hope life is more interesting and eventful for the rest of you, those of you who still remember to drop by this dusty little corner of the internets. Hopefully I'll find more inspiration soon - or at least, I'll find something in the headlines that I feel like blogging about - considering how slow and uninteresting these entries have been as of late, no doubt. (I can't exactly blame anybody for not bothering with that last entry. American culture is confused about sex? Politicians are corrupt and love to have affairs!? I may as well have written an entry about how grass is green, the sky is blue, and how Sonic the Hedgehog is not an accurate representation of real hedgehogs.) In the meantime, I'm going to keep working on finishing this novel up so I can get it on shelves as soon as feasibly and humanly possible - depending on how lucky I get - and in the meantime, enjoying Opoona when it hits stores in the next 24 hours.

It's spring, things are starting to warm up again before the foul beast we call summer shows up again to devour everything. Busy as you may be, make sure to take some time out to enjoy yourself. We can't all work all the time, after all. Take some time to enjoy a walk in the fresh spring air, listen to the birds sing, stop and smell the roses, yadda yadda yadda. I'm turning into a stale platitude here, but you know what I'm getting at.

Waffles?

That's Concentrated Evil You've got in Those Pants of Yours

America loves many things, many things indeed. But there's little America loves more than a good old-fashioned sex scandal. Underneath the puritanical facade this nation loves to hide behind, America's a dirty, dirty place. Of course, we can't look at a natural aspect of humanity to be understood and embraced - What do you mean it isn't a matter of one right way and many wrong ways!? - that'd be downright unamerican, after all! Don't you know the gays and terrorists are in league with the Mexicans trying to take down Taco Bell!?

In 1998, an epic series of sex scandals no one has yet to match - let alone surpass - erupted around president Bill Clinton. Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, and more came out in alleging sexual misconduct from the president - Monica Lewinsky being the most famous of the lot - and in many cases getting admissions of wrongdoing. The Republicans had a field day. We'd never do something like that, clearly the left-wing is immoral! The ever-sleazy Republican lawyer, Kenneth Starr, was appointed to the Office of Independent Counsel, in which he made a career of trying to take Clinton down, ultimately publishing the Starr Report following the Lewinsky scandal, the findings of which led the House of Representatives to impeach Clinton on the grounds of perjury and obstruction of justice. Despite all this and the media circus around Clinton's promiscuity, the American people largely continued to support him. He'd still been a good president, after all.

In 2001, Democratic representative Gary Condit became caught up in his own scandal, in which an intern working for him - Chandra Levy - vanished after they'd had an affair, eventually turning up dead a year later. (Condit was spared further investigative focus in the wake of the September 11th attacks, despite efforts to avoid discussing the subject and exhibiting suspicious behavior - not unlike he was attempting to cover his tracks. To this day, the case of Levy's death remains unsolved, and one has to wonder if there will ever be any sort of justice.) His political career ended in 2003 following a failed bid for reelection, the public not having forgotten his actions nor his hypocrisy, having claimed to be a "pro-family" politician (As is always a popular,
though relatively meaningless label to apply to one's self.), and then cheating on his wife with a woman younger than his own daughter.

Of course, sex scandals are hardly something faced by Democrats alone. On the contrary, we've seen just as much hypocrisy on the right. I couldn't possibly be gay! Look at me ranting about how much I hate the gays and voting against any legislation giving them rights! Are these the actions of anything but the straightest of individuals!? I submit that they are not! What do you mean I've been caught!? In 2007, Republican senator Larry Craig was caught in a sex sting at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, soliciting gay sex in a men's bathroom. Classy. His response to the arrest? Pretty much what you'd expect - utter denial of homosexuality, and claims that he simply "made a mistake." He went on to resign, then in an act of ultimate respectability, decided to make himself look even sadder by withdrawing his guilty plea and deciding to remain in office, rather than simply quietly remove himself from office after losing voters' confidence and disgracing himself in the public eye. Late in 2007, eight gay men came forward to the local paper, including an escort who'd been central to loudly homophobic evangelical preacher Ted Haggard, famous for his appearance in the creepy documentary Jesus Camp, back in 2006.

In 2004, Jessica Cutler - a D.C. intern - kept an online blog about her life in Washington, notably popular for her writing on her sex life. Apparently there wasn't exactly a shortage of men there willing to pay her for sex. The only individual who came forward as one of her lovers (Or "fuckers," if you want to be more accurate in word choice.) was Robert Steinbuch, who worked in the IRS and had, ironically, taught seminars on ethics. He's been rather lawsuit-happy since Cutler's fifteen minutes of fame, trying to both take her down and silence what reminders he can of the scandal. Even the "blogosphere" has helped create Washington sex scandals.

In 2006, Republican representative Mark Foley was embroiled in his own scandal around emails and instant messages that revealed his interest in pursuing teenage boys. Can you feel the family values? In the process of the scandal's investigation, fellow Republican representative Jim Kolbe was also outed for inappropriate conduct with teenage congressional pages. Embarrassing emails and conversations came out, and how did Foley react? It was rehab time. Apparently that classically retarded male fantasy about alcohol making women prone to homosexual activity is true of Republican politicians as well! And in the end, Foley was outed as having been a closeted gay man for a long time, known for the usual predictable reaction of revolt to the idea. Foley ultimately resigned in disgrace.

In 2004, Democratic New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey came out after a scandal revolving around the unusually close relationship he had with his unqualified homeland security advisor, Golan Cipel, and resigned shortly afterwards. His name has recently popped up in the media again, in light of his comments on the most recent political sex scandal - which I'll be getting to in a bit - in a former aide of McGreevey's alleging having had three-ways with McGreevey and his wife on multiple occasions. As of far, only McGreevey's ex-wife Dina Matos has denied these allegations. Politics! Where up is down, gay is straight, and everyone's sticking their junk everywhere else!

In spring 2007, the D.C. Madam scandal erupted around Deborah Jeane Palfrey's prostitution ring, of which several politicians were revealed to be patrons. This lead to the resignation of Randall L. Tobias, ambassador and Bush's former AIDS czar. (A funny combination of words, no matter how you look at it.) Republican senator David Vitter also confessed to being among Palfrey's customers, but remained in office despite his veritable blacklisting by the party.

At last getting to the most recent of these scandals - the obvious prompt of this entry - just last week, Democratic New York governor Eliot Spitzer's political career was effectively ended by his own prostitution scandal. He made a name for himself as a politician hard on crime, from his career as New York attorney general up through his year as governor. He was progressive, and had a lot of good ideas that he was moving forward with. Then he was caught in one of the very acts he'd condemned - patronizing a high-class prostitute. What started as an IRS investigation of some suspicious transactions ended with his outing as a hypocrite. Disgraced, having worked with human rights groups to bust prostitution rings before, Spitzer resigned from office effective as of this past monday, St. Patrick's Day. The human rights groups he'd worked with and some women's rights groups came away with a feeling of betrayal. While many on Wall Street were pleased with the outcome, being that he wasn't exactly well-liked there - none too surprisingly, given the shadiness of that line of work at times.

The prostitute at the center of this scandal, Ashley Alexandra Dupré, has had a less than glorious fifteen minutes of fame over the course of the scandal's heavy media coverage these past ten days. She's tried to make herself sympathetic, telling a story of past difficulties at home that seems fairly questionable. Despite claiming not to do drugs, it's been alleged that she's done quite a bit of coke. And that she'd even slept with Charlie Sheen. (And that's a pretty low blow for any prostitute.) Naturally, since her personal life exploded all over the internet and media - complete with plenty of provocative pictures - multiple media outlets - Hustler, Penthouse, Vivid - have sought to get her to pose nude for them. Then to throw a little more acid on her face, Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild (Everybody's favorite outlet for exploited inebriated college girls, headed by Johnny Douchebag himself. Hopefully we can look forward to him spending quite a few more years in jail over those tax evasion charges he's facing yet.) propositioned her, then withdrew his proposition after finding he'd already recorded her on her 18th birthday. (As he does take pride in his company's efforts to prey on girls on their 18th birthdays in particular - there's a big market for almost-pedophilia content, after all. And not a hint of remorse for his scumbaggery in interviews and cover stories. He definitely seems like some sort of sociopath. And he seems to have learned nothing from nearly a year in prison.) I would imagine that's one of the most painful slaps in the face a young woman these days could receive - especially after making the mistake of going anywhere near the Girls Gone Wild people. In and of all that, it's hard not to have at least a modicum of sympathy for Dupré, even if she brought most of this on herself. And even if her music is unintentionally comically terrible. She's not much younger than me, and with the internet, no matter how much time passes, this scandal will never go away for her. She will always be "that whore Spitzer was plowing." (Even if the average guy online probably wouldn't pass on an opportunity to sleep with her either. Given her background here, I'd pass, personally. But then, I've never been into the whole macho sex focus I'm supposed to, as a guy in his early twenties. I'm one of those good conversation and unrequited love doofuses.) The bulk of my sympathies lie with Spitzer's wife and kids. I can only imagine what they're going through right now. As for Spitzer himself, I agreed with a good bit of his political track record, but in displaying the hypocrisy he has here, my sympathy for him is very limited.

Soon after Lt. Gov. David Paterson was sworn in as Spitzer's replacement - setting milestones as New York's first black governor and the nation's first legally blind person to hold office for the longer term now - it came out that he too had had an affair in the past. New Yorkers just can't win.

Ultimately, obviously, "morals" when it comes to sex and marital fidelity are not an issue either party can proudly claim to represent. (As much as the Republicans would like to - but then, they like to tell themselves that they represent a lot of things, at least, when going after the gullible voters.) It's hard to say what it is exactly that leads to this sort of behavior in the individuals elected to represent us. Maybe it's the corrupting force of power, as people in political office - especially higher up - are used to enjoying getting whatever they want, and as history has shown, human nature is that power rarely goes unabused. It could very well be something more innately psychologically rooted as well - it certainly takes a certain something in individuals to stand up before people and tell them that they deserve to represent you, whether as president, governor, or even simply as the representative for their local voting district. In some cases, it could potentially be something else entirely. But however you look at it, after a certain point, a line is crossed where their thoughts simply become: "Me me me! This is awesome, sex for me! I love this job!" (And who amongst us hasn't had that exact thought? Well, aside from myself.) This sort of behavior is observable in politicians, looking all the way back to our founding fathers, and will no doubt continue as long as America exists as a country. Every so often, the media will have something to get really excited about while the people either get outraged or roll their eyes. American political culture can be - and certainly is, more often than not - an ugly thing. And when there's real, serious political issues worth broaching - as there certainly are these days - what better to distract us from these matters than a good old sex scandal? What do you mean politicians have physical needs too!?

Can I interest you ladies in some dungeons and mayhaps even some sort of dragons?

Feels like it's been forever, eh? (Just pretend.) I've been kind of burnt out and uninspired when it comes to blogging this past week after an unusually productive February in that regard. (Not to mention a rather messy GRE day last week.)

Like most nerds, I've been in a state of mourning of sorts as well - a very special tired tabletop gaming kind of mourning. Last week, geeks of the world lost one of the greats, the influential creator of Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax.

Yes, ever since his death, everyone's been beating those failed saving throw jokes into the ground - including myself. But I'm not going to do that here. For this is a serious blog, and I am a serious blogger. (I'm seriously trying to keep a straight face here, if that counts for anything.)

Of course, beyond that he was a king amongst nerds, there's not much else to be said about Gygax (At least, that's my excuse for not focusing on his personal life here.), but that he was a great influence on the "thinking nerd's" favorite genre of game - the role-playing game. (The kind with lots of character statistics and dice when playing a tabletop one - not the kind of "role-playing" when your ex-husband wanted to keep dressing up like a giant baby in the bedroom. What was wrong with that guy?) This genre is often referred to - particularly among computer and video gamers - as an "RPG." (No, not the gun. How are you not getting this?)

Dungeons & Dragons was Gygax's gaming offspring, taking over nerds' lives upon first launching in 1974, and filling parents with dread. Little Johnny's becoming a satanist! Again! This was a common train of thought back in the 1970s, in part due to the fear of Communism the government had verbally beaten into Americans back then, and in part due to the fact that everybody was still doing acid all the time back then. (They hadn't put enough distance between themselves and the '60s yet.) Gygax left the gaming company he'd co-founded, TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) in 1985 during a management shakeup while he was involved in the production of the mid-80s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. TSR would go on to create all sorts of abortions (And I'll admit it, I actually own this game, VHS and everything.) of the franchise before they were bought out by Wizards of the Coast in 1997 and they opted to update (See: Butcher) Dungeons & Dragons' core rules for the sake of making the game more accessible to new generations of geeks. What do you mean we don't have THAC0 anymore!?

Inspired by tabletop RPGs, in 1980, Richard Garriott brought the genre to PCs with the original Ultima, his long-running series of adventures in the fantasy world of Britannia, starring the Avatar. (A blatant intentional analogue for the player, a trend we would continue to see in RPGs on the PC and video game consoles/portables, which has taken something of a downturn in recent years.)

Ultima, in turn, would lead to Japanese game director Yuji Horii of Enix to create his own take on the genre, working with composer Koichi Sugiyama and artist Akira Toriyama. (Best known for his Dragon Ball comics and animated series, now being hilariously made into a doubtlessly terrible Hollywood film slated for a 2009 release, with a now white protagonist! ... Stephen Chow, what the hell have you agreed to produce?) This series, Dragon Quest, would launch on the MSX and NES in Japan in 1986 - and later in the west in 1989 as Dragon Warrior. The series continues even today, with its 9th installment slated for a release on the Nintendo DS this year, and a first person spin-off, Dragon Quest Swords, having hit the Wii just last month. Of course, the greatest accomplishment made in this series - beyond introducing RPG video games to Japan - was the creation of one of the greatest gaming mascot characters of all time - Slime. Bow before Slime. He will be your friend. (And you will inevitably spend the first few hours of every game in the series killing lots of them.)

Following the many Dragon Quest clones other companies released in Japan in the '80s, Squaresoft, a game developer failing after an over-investment in Nintendo's unsuccessful Famicom Disk System, released what was to be their swan song in 1987 - Final Fantasy. The game was a hit and reversed Square's fortunes, ultimately becoming nearly synonymous with the RPG genre by the early 1990s. They were enjoyed for their imaginative universes, intriguing casts of characters, and battle system that bucked the Dragon Quest trend, displaying the player's party of characters on screen during battle. Polished by translator and localizer Ted Woolsey, Final Fantasy VI on the Super Nintendo proved to be the series' shining gem, with a cast of (Mostly) well-developed three-dimensional characters and storylines that touched on real world issues - such as teen pregnancy and genocide.

Then Square decided they wanted to take the series mainstream during the shift from the Super Nintendo to the Playstation as the dominant console in the late 1990s. This is where everything went to hell. RPGs had been long enjoyed on game machines largely by a minority of geeks who enjoyed the slower-paced, deeper gameplay that required us to think our way through the game and immerse ourselves in a brilliant new world with new adventures to be had. Final Fantasy VII exploded onto the Playstation scene to ridiculous -and in many cases bankrolled - amounts of praise. (The greatest game ever made, my ass.) The game was a smash hit, bringing the genre to its first mainstream success - without truly making the genre mainstream, as every RPG that didn't have Final Fantasy in its title "sucked" by default to the new generation of kids the game introduced to RPG video games. The gameplay was shallow, the story was nearly incoherent, and the translation was abysmal, Ted Woolsey having departed prior to its localization. Rather than telling an interesting story with compelling characters, it was time to appeal to a new generation of gamers - with attitude. The game's design largely focused around trying to be much "darker" than before. (Which largely amounted to a well designed dystopic city where the game began, and the story falling apart shortly after leaving it several hours in, with the rest of the game's massive world a bland, forgettable place, seemingly an afterthought. The story itself was painful cliche to its core, and its characters amongst the worst gaming has seen - setting a depressing trend. From then on, Final Fantasy was all about moody, effeminate young men for its protagonists, who are neither sympathetic nor likable, yet still played up by fans as some sort of ultimate badasses. Every protagonist from then on would be more of the same. The supporting cast? Two female romantic interests - one who receives little development and is summarily killed off in an effort to provoke an emotional response in the player (At which they fail, horribly.), and another who exists to essentially be a pair of giant breasts - a borderline racist stereotype, a couple of talking animals, and a couple of extra optional characters who add nothing to the story whatsoever. The dialogue? Poorly translated teen angst.) In a matter of a couple of years, Final Fantasy went from intelligent, enthralling fantasy to F-grade teen drama. Ever since, any RPG that features a silent protagonist intended to act as an analogue for the player is immediately berated - why not have an angsty pretty boy whine at us for 50 hours instead? And now, what Final Fantasy stands for - at least in its newest numbered releases, the spin-offs capture at least some of the imagination and adventure of the old days - is just depressing. They're overhyped cinematic messes that have largely abandoned their genre roots in lieu of delivering a shallow, style-over-substance experience for today's ADD gaming generation. Truly disheartening for those of us who grew up enjoying the series when it actually held some redeeming value.

I kind of got off topic as usual, but all these games are, ultimately, a part of Gygax's legacy in many regards. He created the RPG that kicked off the genre before we were even playing games on computers, and decades later, many of us still play in our parents' basements and local comic and game stores.

Farewell, Mr. Gygax. You will be missed, and certainly not forgotten.

Yes, this was the entry in which I inevitably outed myself as the ultra-geek that I am. I feel kind of dirty. In my defense, I haven't played any tabletop RPGs in at least a decade now. (Though granted, that's mostly for a lack of opportunity.)

Don't Be GREedy

Take a moment to allow yourself to bask in the warming glow of the greatness that is this entry's title. Are you doing it, basking? No, that's not radiation poisoning you're feeling - that's your new super powers manifesting. (Only standing near my microwave - I mean, blog entry - can bring about such a magnificent transformation.) And these new powers of yours? Lymphoma. Luck of the draw, my friend!

At any rate - as you may well have surmised by now from that glorious choice of titles - like most aspiring graduate students, I am preparing to take the GRE - or Gratuitously Radical Examination - in the next 24 hours. Thought you hated standardized testing in your youth? You can learn to hate it on whole new levels in adulthood! Hrmm, is this individual a decent human being, or is he perhaps functionally retarded? Get that man a Scantron sheet, stat! And ask him some questions on subjects most people never need in their daily lives - tell us what a cosine is, you son of a bitch! Do it or we shoot you! Though I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I get to be subjected to most - if not all - of it over a computer. But really, what gets one's blood pumping more than sitting in a room taking a test for four hours? I couldn't be more excited if a piece of that spy satellite crushed me on the way into the testing center!

Naturally, in anticipating this exhausting experience as much as I am, I felt that I should impart some pre-test preparation advice to any and all fellow soon-to-be test takers, in appropriate standardized testing fashion - by which I mean I'll be using letters instead of numbers to differentiate between each piece of advice. Without them, you'd be lost and entirely unable to tell each one apart. It's okay, I understand, we're all a little like that here on the internet - except for me, I'm not like that at all.

A) Cheating - Yeah, they tend to discourage this on standardized tests. (Hell, all tests, if you want to be all "scientific" and "technical" and "shit.") But this is not a rule - it is a challenge. They may be pointing all manners of cameras and rail guns and people staring at you to guilt/threaten you out of cheating the whole time, but if you can successfully cheat despite that, then you will earn the rank of Grand Master. Grand Master of what, exactly, is still a mystery the likes of which no stoned kids and talking dog have yet been able to unravel. But of what is known, apparently an abacus plays a key role in this process. So, yeah. Good luck with that.

B) Insomnia - So, you have trouble sleeping before exams due to stress, right? Right? (Help me out here!) Right. Sometimes, the best way to deal with that problem is not to bother. Coffee's just going to make you crash midway through, too. So basically, you need to train yourself to enter a zen-like trance in which the difference between consciousness and slumber becomes impossible to discern. In this state of sleep-waking, you will achieve enlightenment and easily ace any and all test you are faced with. However, this method poses some risk of simply falling asleep and failing by default. And about 68% of the time, people get their results back and find out that they somehow managed to change their name to "Ronald McDonald" or "The Grimace" midway through the exam. That's never cool for anybody.

C) Frustration - Tests are inherently stressful, with perhaps your entire future at stake - even if you're already a college graduate, let's no pretend that diplomas themselves are worth that much these days - and as such, it's only natural that you'd become legitimately agitated over the course of the test-taking period. This is why you should apply for a Lobster Permit at the testing center well in advance, as so to be allowed to bring a lobster along with you on the day of the test to scream obscenities at whenever you are uncertain of an answer. If you're wondering about the origins of this practice, you need look no further than to the words of Bologna Prophet Oscar Mayer, who once said, "Fuck you, lobster! I don't need you or your money!" Great words from a great man.

D) Self-confidence - It's easy to take on a defeatist attitude before a major test you have little to no ways to study for, in lacking any kind of specific study guide with answers to commit to memory. In cases like these, sometimes it's for the best to simply look inside yourself and - you know, I can't finish this with a straight face. You're screwed and you know it.

E) Study Fuel - It's always important to eat before facing major undertakings like this as well. Your brain needs energy to function. Without energy, your brain will become as lazy and stupid as the rest of you. You don't want that, do you? Put that remote control down and listen to me when I'm talking to you! Anyway, some might suggest that you eat something with a lot of carbohydrates, maybe some protein - general fuel for the human body. But we both know better than that. Granola? A well-balanced breakfast with Count Chocula? Pah. Order the cheapest, greasiest pizza you can find - eat a couple of them in their entirety if you can - and stay away from bathrooms. Relieving important bodily functions might interfere with your concentration! Nothing will help you concentrate on your exams like cheap, greasy pizza eaten 4-5 hours prior to the test. Antacids will also trip you up. Focus on the pizza - become the pizza, live the pizza. Only then shall you know truth.

You learned a lot about test-taking and study habits, no? Of course you did. And it's all thanks to me. You can thank me with a ten-gun salute. Ideally in the vicinity of an old folks' home. They need to relive good memories too, after all.