Pwn3d

As any gamer can tell you, our forums and games themselves are constantly being barraged by racist or sexist comments.  Much of this sexism is particularly against women and homosexuals.

That being said, one of my favorite game studios is BioWare.  They consistently push out highly enjoyable, character and plot driven games.  And now, straight out BioWare itself, comes epic pwnage against someone complaining about their catering to heterosexual women and homosexual people:

http://www.nomorelost.org/2011/03/25/straight-male-gamer-told-to-get-over-it-by-bioware/

Hell yeah.

Cultural Wars

We're still in Adar, so despite all the terrible events in the world it is supposed to be a month of joy.  Nissan is rapidly approaching, which also is considered not a time to reflect on sorrow but rather to look forward to that ancient festival of freedom, Passover.  It is a time to look toward betterment, the great potential of our species.  Now, I tend to be a cynical optimist. (I once was a cynical pessimist, so this is quite the improvement.)  The definition of a cynical optimist, to me, is that while I believe humans have great potential to better themselves, I highly doubt that they will.

Now, where is this discussion going?  My friend Yitz Jordan (Stage name Y-Love.) linked this highly political rap:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b66u-mzfBPE

[This is the final cut version.  The original quality he sent me had lower sound quality and actually included the painfully long mock Bono segment.]

I am highly supportive of people's movements to increase freedom under oppression, and so find this video both witty and interesting.  Also, it's absolutely amazing how much social media is helping to topple regimes.  One of the first things these dictatorial powers do in response to revolutions is to shut off internet access to stop the seemingly harmless flood Tweeting, blogging, and statuses.  Only the leaders who plan ahead control the internet long before any possible thought of overthrowing them can even brew.  The jab at America pretending to be a liberty and peace loving country amused me as well.  As a friend of mine stated during the Egyptian revolution, "...amused at how the US government spent trillions of dollars trying to fit square democracy into circular societies.  But now that people are clamoring for democracy all the US can do it cringe and try to make believe that they are not against it."  Well put indeed.

However, I cannot find myself agreeing with everything in the video.  The world does not get easily divided into good and evil, black and white, like some childish story.  Though I feel for the average Palestinian's situation, I do not find myself at odds with the State of Israel as a concept nor can I condone attacks by terrorists against civilians.  Is the country perfect?  No, but I doubt you can name me any which is.  It's stupid that most liberal thinkers see Israel as some sort of invading, colonial force while refusing to see that Israel is closer to an ideal government in the Middle East than any other.  Freedom of religion, anyone?  Democratic elections?  Secular government?  These are all goals the same people ask for in other countries, even in this rap itself!  My other problem is with this oddly supportive imagine of Hugo Chavez, who I am afraid is anything but a nice man.  He's much closer to a Mubarak or Gaddafi than some sort of popular revolutionary, contrary to popular belief.

So, like all things, I find myself weighing both the pros and cons of this video and the revolutions to which it refers.  I find it better to be a moderate, middle-of-the-road kind of person when it comes to politics.  After all, everyone can produce gems from time to time but all of us shit sooner or later.  As Buddha said, "Follow the GD Middle Path!"--Or something like that...  (I may have paraphrased.)  Shabbat shalom, meatbags.

"I have dreamed of joy departed..."

Today it is raining quite hard, so my gardening options are limited.  Instead, I'll tell you about my dream.  Last night I had a pretty trippy dream, odd enough that I don't need acid.  Now, I do have problems falling and staying asleep (Thanks to an assortment of chemical imbalances.), and as such dreams are a rare treat for me.  When I do have them, they tend to be quite unusual.  I present it to you all here.

Some of my friends and I were on this alien planet fighting in some intergalatic war.  The enemies were also human, but they belonged to another nation/empire/government/whatever.  Oddly enough, we alo had Toothless the dragon with us, from _How to Train Your Dragon_.  Seeing as this was a dream, this of course made sense to me at the time.

We were given these energy shields that you could hold in front of you by holding onto these two bars.  The bars each also had a button which controlled the firing of lasers located to the front of the energy shield  When you were lying down in position, the shield protected your entire body; but if you charged it could only protect most of your body (You would choose to either leave your legs or head open.  Legs were less protected usually, for obvious reasons.)  When we all started to charge I decided to ignore my officer and began shooting out all the legs of the enemies to our front.  It turned out that this would save my squad's life, as the rest of our army got overrun while my squad was able to run off and hide.  The enemy army left the planet because it was sparsely settled by colonists and the war was only about controlling territory.  Unfortunately, this left us stranded on a strange, unknown planet.

Later that evening, Toothless the dragon found this alien cube which had Draconic script on it.  Evidently the planet had once been inhabited by alien dragons.  Using his claws the cube opened out into this sort of table, and written in Draconic was "For the chosen one" above this big, long bud of alien dragon-ganja which was stuck onto a metal rod and already lit.  Toothless sniffed at it in a feline manner (If you've seen the movie, you know what I mean.), then tried the weed.  His eyes widened and he started puffing it excessively, going crazy like a cat on nip.  The dream ended with me trying to get Toothless to stop smoking and help us find something to eat.

And so ends another tale in the Twilight Zone.

Enter Boredom

There is no rhyme or reason to what I will be posting on here, just the mad ramblings of a strange little creature.  I will probably post about music, books, organic gardening, vermicomposting, world events, people who piss me off, Judaism, and whatever else comes to mind.