I'm not inside my own mind today... and I have university to thank for that.
6 am every morning my body subconsciously stirs me from slumber. I look around, the sunight defies my internal clock and I have the inclination to shower and make breakfast. It's not until a thought that no, no, you're done Bryce... you can go back to bed. That thought sets in and then it's safe to resume sleep for another hour or two. I am allowed to kill the urgency.
When you consider the semantics of the term, full-time study it doesn't set in at first. As a twenty-five year old re-entering the educational paradigm there was a certain feeling I couldn't quite escape. This force of reminder that I was somewhat out of place. First-year studies haven't changed in their focus too much from when Universities were pushing me to attend them out of High School, transition is still a large focus of what they're trying to accomplish but to what end?
In the University of Manitoba, their "U1" program was what lured me to select that school over the University of Winnipeg. That and prestige, let's not beat around the bush about that. Anyway, the whole idea is that the university wants to make the first year of university as seamless as possible and as accessible and easy, etc, etc, etc. They do a very good job of achieving this but I feel it may be at the cost of the true impact of second year studies. Something I'll have to deal with next year to see if it is indeed true or not. My full-year classes that were each 6 credit hours had no mid-terms and no final, just annual exams throughout the two terms that served to equate to the two large tests. I liked this study but I feel that in subsequent years when classes are likely to have simply mid-terms and finals that I am not prepared for that... then again I didn't feel prepared to take the first year on and I handled that pretty well.
The biggest lesson I learned this year, which will help me in life and in my studies is this: You get what you put in to it. Any class, Art of Film, Philosophy, or Law and Power in Canada. I got what I put into the classes. When my papers lacked that extra hour or so of work my grades suffered. When I decided to skip that hour of study I thought about doing in the beginning of the day, my grades suffered. It was absolutely paramount, especially in the closing month, to make sure I was on top of my studies and when I wasn't I really paid the price. My GPA, with only one class yet to submit my final grade is 3.33, I got 2 B+'s and A+ and a C so I cannot complain about my grades, I passed my glasses so that's what counds in the end right? I expect I will get a high C to mid- B in Philosophy so that might take a bit of a hit but I'm happy with that. I didn't reach my goal of the Dean's Honours (3.55 GPA) but I think it is still respectable. First year, out of the educational system for over half of a decade. I am happy with this and if anyone asked me what to expect in their first year of university I would tell them this. Expect to work your ass off!
The pressures most certainly got to me with time. I want to believe that next year I can avoid the breakdown of epic proportions I experienced prior to finals. Emotionally, physically and mentally exhausted I pretty much lost control of myself and that carried through a few days of the weekend. I've never experienced such an overwhelming sensation of emotion. The stress is the thing that can be most easily managed by simply staying on top of the work that needed to be done. It's like I said, you decide "well I'll take this afternoon off" and you will pay for it. I did, it caught up to me because I got cocky and well when I saw the list of tasks stacking up beyond anything I had in front of me so far this year I kind of shut down and broke like a robot. It wasn't easy and thank god Natasha was there to keep me somewhat grounded. She said it best to me when I finally felt confident enough to tell her about my problems because I was worried that I might fail Psychology. When that became a reaslistic possibility, everything else was magnified. If I fail Psychology, what else might I fail? (Psychology was my C grade, by the way)
"What did I tell you before you began your studies this year?" She said to me.
"I don't remember..." I said honestly.
"I said, don't hate yourself if you don't get an A..."
The most important thing was something I had lost sight of. I have huge goals, I want to see this through to the end and who knows, maybe have a doctorate when it's all said and done. Isn't that why everyone goes to university? Overwhelmed by this quest of education, and my personal standard of quality that I've tried to maintain throughout the year. It was clear I was placing too much pressure on myself. I hope that's something I can keep sight of next year, and the years to come as the work loads are only going to get bigger. It's more important to stay on top of it and not only that, but to be able to accept a grade that may not be to my preference. I busted my ass on my Film paper to get an A-. That chuffed the shit out of me at first but now I like to think of it as my "George Michael Moment"
I don't get any ice cream for that :).
So as school transitions into the summer work period, I have to wait until June to declare as an 'arts major' and then at some point in the summer I will find out my registration time. Hoping my GPA helps me get a better selection period than my high school GPA did. I know that the studies I'm considering are very competitive. If I could go back, I would much rather have taken that night class 7-10 PM Tuesday nights and toughed that out instead of doing the online component Psychology class. It's so much material, that proper lectures would've really helped me. Then again, I know myself, and I know the temptation to say "fuck it..." and not go to the 7pm lecture, or to leave the lecture early, would have been too great.
Those kinds of sacrifices could be the difference between me staying on top of my shit or having an episode like Margot Kidder...
So yeah, that's the summary thoughts of first year. I can breath again, I don't need to worry about "Oh... I should be studying right now." during every single moment of my life.
At least... not until September.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Half Way There
I'm not inside my own mind today... Yesterday I had my first and only (this semester) university final which means it's officially Christmas Holiday for me. Not to rub it in or anything like that....
It's been an experience for sure and I'm looking forward to adapting my study habits with the rest of the year so that I can do myself some flavors and avoid having to write a paper in two days or study for an exam in only a few days. Lets just say they stress 'time management' in the orientations for a reason though their efforts to hammer that home clearly fell deaf to my ego as I am always firmly in the belief that I'm in control of whatever circumstances that befall upon me.
University of Manitoba is interesting, it's a smaller school obviously but it's a neat campus, they try to rally the troops and get the school spirit going, a lot of students wear U of M sweaters and t-shirts and hoodies so they're certainly selling the product. They had these baby blue sweaters (the school's colours are brown and yellow, by the way) that I liked but they didn't have them when I had the money to buy one. Alas...
All of my classes are interesting. Philosophy is interesting in particular. I'm wondering what I will get on my paper, regardless, things have kind of shifted gears. The year started out with Logic which was rather mathematical in essence and then to transition from that to full on philosophy was kind of jarring at first. It's a challenging class in regard to thinking about what you really believe in and what you stand for and assessing the moral and ethical parameters of that is kind of fun.
Psychology was as I predicted a struggle only because of the online component. It was take the partial lecture / partial online class or take the three hour night class. I picked what I felt was the lesser of two evils as I knew although I could be more focused with the night class, a three hour lecture after 6pm is not ideal. Its making the time to listen to the lectures online (I can listen to them on my iPhone, I recently learned...) has been challenging. Once I get home, I want to chill. Of course, this class as a priority I've been diligent but I need to be more-so.
Sociology is fun. My professor is a self-professed "tree hugging" marxist who has some pretty strong feelings toward the oil and gas industry and toward consumerism too. He isn't radical but he isn't shy about his opinions either and he's very conscious to differentiate the two. I think I've learned the most from this class about a lot of different things. It's been a lot of fun.
Lastly, Film Studies. I got an A- on my final paper. I know how George Michael feels now. It was a fun class and it was the class I had the final for. It was a great opportunity to see some films I would never have watched otherwise and even watch a couple of my favorite movies, Punch Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. It's morphed the way I watch movies now, I don't care if that sounds corny (it does) but I do have a new appreciation of movies that I didn't have before. I am still pretentious with my movie tastes, I don't see that changing.
I have politics in the coming semester, it will be interesting. It's a class about Canadian politics in particular so I'm looking to hopefully learn some things in that class. I've always felt strong about my political opinions but also kind of ignorant as well. I feel like I'm in the perfect position to finish the year strong and my goal of Honors is in sight. I know it's kind of nerdy but I got honors in high school regardless of the fact that pretty much everyone got honors in my grad class, I just want to keep that train rolling.
I'm looking forward to the holiday, to a little relaxation, and who knows, with the 21st approaching maybe this will be my last entry. I'm sure I'll break the laws of life and death and find a way to blog from beyond the grave...
It's been an experience for sure and I'm looking forward to adapting my study habits with the rest of the year so that I can do myself some flavors and avoid having to write a paper in two days or study for an exam in only a few days. Lets just say they stress 'time management' in the orientations for a reason though their efforts to hammer that home clearly fell deaf to my ego as I am always firmly in the belief that I'm in control of whatever circumstances that befall upon me.
University of Manitoba is interesting, it's a smaller school obviously but it's a neat campus, they try to rally the troops and get the school spirit going, a lot of students wear U of M sweaters and t-shirts and hoodies so they're certainly selling the product. They had these baby blue sweaters (the school's colours are brown and yellow, by the way) that I liked but they didn't have them when I had the money to buy one. Alas...
All of my classes are interesting. Philosophy is interesting in particular. I'm wondering what I will get on my paper, regardless, things have kind of shifted gears. The year started out with Logic which was rather mathematical in essence and then to transition from that to full on philosophy was kind of jarring at first. It's a challenging class in regard to thinking about what you really believe in and what you stand for and assessing the moral and ethical parameters of that is kind of fun.
Psychology was as I predicted a struggle only because of the online component. It was take the partial lecture / partial online class or take the three hour night class. I picked what I felt was the lesser of two evils as I knew although I could be more focused with the night class, a three hour lecture after 6pm is not ideal. Its making the time to listen to the lectures online (I can listen to them on my iPhone, I recently learned...) has been challenging. Once I get home, I want to chill. Of course, this class as a priority I've been diligent but I need to be more-so.
Sociology is fun. My professor is a self-professed "tree hugging" marxist who has some pretty strong feelings toward the oil and gas industry and toward consumerism too. He isn't radical but he isn't shy about his opinions either and he's very conscious to differentiate the two. I think I've learned the most from this class about a lot of different things. It's been a lot of fun.
Lastly, Film Studies. I got an A- on my final paper. I know how George Michael feels now. It was a fun class and it was the class I had the final for. It was a great opportunity to see some films I would never have watched otherwise and even watch a couple of my favorite movies, Punch Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. It's morphed the way I watch movies now, I don't care if that sounds corny (it does) but I do have a new appreciation of movies that I didn't have before. I am still pretentious with my movie tastes, I don't see that changing.
I have politics in the coming semester, it will be interesting. It's a class about Canadian politics in particular so I'm looking to hopefully learn some things in that class. I've always felt strong about my political opinions but also kind of ignorant as well. I feel like I'm in the perfect position to finish the year strong and my goal of Honors is in sight. I know it's kind of nerdy but I got honors in high school regardless of the fact that pretty much everyone got honors in my grad class, I just want to keep that train rolling.
I'm looking forward to the holiday, to a little relaxation, and who knows, with the 21st approaching maybe this will be my last entry. I'm sure I'll break the laws of life and death and find a way to blog from beyond the grave...
Monday, July 23, 2012
A Legend Ended In IMAX
I'm not inside my own mind today... You can thank Christopher Nolan and company for that.
Last Night I saw The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX.
IT
WAS
AWESOME!!!!!!
It felt like I was witnessing something special. In my heart, I'm skeptical that a filmmaker with the imagination, and the cinematic prowess that Christopher Nolan has will ever make a superhero film again, much less a Batman movie. This trilogy was bigger than Star Wars for me. The Dark Knight was like Empire Strikes Back, as far as the Star Wars metaphor was concerned. It had the big moments, and it set the tone for what was to come in Return of The Jedi
The Dark Knight Rises was everything it needed to be and more.
WAS it better than The Dark Knight? No... but it certainly wasn't far off.
To compare Dark Knight Rises to The Dark Knight is almost like directly comparing Return of The Jedi to Empire Strikes Back. It's almost un-fair to do so, you have to look at the movies for what they are and go from there.
For the sake of secrecy, I'm going to try my damnedest to refrain from spoilers here. I just have so much on my mind, I guess... I barely slept last night. All I could do was think about this movie. I had to accept that expectations are objective and they ruin movies. Leaving the theater, I was a bit chided boecause a couple of my predictions of the plot came true. They didn't come to be in a linear fashion, for that I thank Christopher Nolan, and in the context of the movie, the way it was pulled off was perfect I thought. It still happened and Christopher Nolan has always seemed to subvert my expectations with his imagination.
Don't get me wrong. That still happened, and it was glorious. I guess I've never predicted a Christopher Nolan movie, and I didn't predict what happened in DKR, just a couple plot points, so I needed time to get over myself in that regard. Here's some things
The Plot, the plot was great, an excellent send off to the Trilogy, and really gives the entire story a sense of closure, as a true third part to a trilogy should. I think it was a bit melodramatic at points, but it had to be to truly sell the scope of what was happening. I think, if there's anything to criticize its that there wasn't enough Batman. There's got to be a 2:1 ratio of scenes involving Bruce Wayne to scenes involving Batman. That's cool, but it's the only thing I have a real beef with. Some spotty CGI in parts doubled with a few moments where you really have to suspend your disbelief. It's a compelling tale that brings real drama to a Superhero world that deserves it.
Most comic book films are shallow explorations of the title characters, and excuse for explosions and action. Christopher Nolan brought depth and drama to a world that had never really got its due. You never saw that level of depth from Tim Burton, and especially not from Schumacher. Their films were about the spectacle of the Bat, more so than anything else. I think that's why I'm drawn to Nolan's trilogy as much as I am. It's a deep world for a fanboy like me to get lost into.
It's far from a perfect film, I think that honestly it might be the most flawed of any of the 3 movies but as a send-off to their story it did what it had to do. It had the over-the-top villain it required. Bruce Wayne learned to cope with loss, and learned to love again. There was character growth that you don't see from superhero movies very often unless its Iron Man learning to build a suit with temperature resistance.
The Dark Knight rose, indeed he did. I loved it, and I'm going to see it again in a couple of days. I need to think about it some more. I want to write a bigger blog about comparing the Dark Knight Trilogy to the Star Wars Trilogy (There's only one to true Star Wars fans...) In the end, I was very satisfied.
Last Night I saw The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX.
IT
WAS
AWESOME!!!!!!
It felt like I was witnessing something special. In my heart, I'm skeptical that a filmmaker with the imagination, and the cinematic prowess that Christopher Nolan has will ever make a superhero film again, much less a Batman movie. This trilogy was bigger than Star Wars for me. The Dark Knight was like Empire Strikes Back, as far as the Star Wars metaphor was concerned. It had the big moments, and it set the tone for what was to come in Return of The Jedi
The Dark Knight Rises was everything it needed to be and more.
WAS it better than The Dark Knight? No... but it certainly wasn't far off.
To compare Dark Knight Rises to The Dark Knight is almost like directly comparing Return of The Jedi to Empire Strikes Back. It's almost un-fair to do so, you have to look at the movies for what they are and go from there.
For the sake of secrecy, I'm going to try my damnedest to refrain from spoilers here. I just have so much on my mind, I guess... I barely slept last night. All I could do was think about this movie. I had to accept that expectations are objective and they ruin movies. Leaving the theater, I was a bit chided boecause a couple of my predictions of the plot came true. They didn't come to be in a linear fashion, for that I thank Christopher Nolan, and in the context of the movie, the way it was pulled off was perfect I thought. It still happened and Christopher Nolan has always seemed to subvert my expectations with his imagination.
Don't get me wrong. That still happened, and it was glorious. I guess I've never predicted a Christopher Nolan movie, and I didn't predict what happened in DKR, just a couple plot points, so I needed time to get over myself in that regard. Here's some things
The Plot, the plot was great, an excellent send off to the Trilogy, and really gives the entire story a sense of closure, as a true third part to a trilogy should. I think it was a bit melodramatic at points, but it had to be to truly sell the scope of what was happening. I think, if there's anything to criticize its that there wasn't enough Batman. There's got to be a 2:1 ratio of scenes involving Bruce Wayne to scenes involving Batman. That's cool, but it's the only thing I have a real beef with. Some spotty CGI in parts doubled with a few moments where you really have to suspend your disbelief. It's a compelling tale that brings real drama to a Superhero world that deserves it.
Most comic book films are shallow explorations of the title characters, and excuse for explosions and action. Christopher Nolan brought depth and drama to a world that had never really got its due. You never saw that level of depth from Tim Burton, and especially not from Schumacher. Their films were about the spectacle of the Bat, more so than anything else. I think that's why I'm drawn to Nolan's trilogy as much as I am. It's a deep world for a fanboy like me to get lost into.
It's far from a perfect film, I think that honestly it might be the most flawed of any of the 3 movies but as a send-off to their story it did what it had to do. It had the over-the-top villain it required. Bruce Wayne learned to cope with loss, and learned to love again. There was character growth that you don't see from superhero movies very often unless its Iron Man learning to build a suit with temperature resistance.
The Dark Knight rose, indeed he did. I loved it, and I'm going to see it again in a couple of days. I need to think about it some more. I want to write a bigger blog about comparing the Dark Knight Trilogy to the Star Wars Trilogy (There's only one to true Star Wars fans...) In the end, I was very satisfied.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Canadian Youth Unemployment Rate of 14.8% is BULLSHIT
I'm not inside my own mind today... Thank the Globe and Mail for that.
After reading a recent article about Canada's 14.8% Youth Unemployment Rate... It got me to thinking, WHY could this be such an issue? I'm a youth, I'm turning 25, I've never had a problem finding a job and I'm even going to start attending university in September. Why are so many youth's having difficulties?
Could it be that they're lazy, unmotivated products of the Soccer Mom Generation that's coddled them to this point? Now that they're released unto the world that will NOT pat their bottoms and bend to their every whim like mommy did, they're finally getting a much needed reality check.
Could it be that the youth lack the drive, work ethic and attitude that employers want to see in potential employees? That they will turn to "mature" workers that they know will work for the money they're earning as opposed to a youth who doesn't even value the job they're trying to get?
The article in question centers around what it refers to as NEET's, Youth that are not in education, employment or training. It's actually kind of coincidental to me that this very angle the Globe is using to paint this sympathetic view of today's youth is the same angle I am using to show that Canada's youth today are lazy, unmotivated, and apathetic at large. As a youth who formerly, had no interest in going to university, it's a completely valid argument. High School destroys the drive to be educated in many teenagers (an entirely different argument all together) and it's hard to acknowledge that post-secondary education by and large is an entirely different beast. Training for jobs? You usually have to pay for that... so why bother?
The dangerous paradigm this creates is that, obviously, not ALL youth fall into this category. It's the gym class theory of one student ruining it for the entire class. We've all been there, working with someone in their late teen's or early twenties who simply coasts along. Let me rifle off some quotes and tell me if you've heard any of these ones before?
"I'm tired, I can't wait to go home..." - after they just got to work.
"Yeah I still live with my parents."
"I don't really plan on going to school" - even I was guilty of this for a long time.
Or a personal favorite "I'm going to get so stoned after work..."
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for an after work buzz on but I guess it depends on your priorities. When you get to work and all you think about is going home and getting high, there's an obvious lack of work ethic, or desire to work.
Could this percentage of Canadians (youth) who have been out of work for a year or longer be driven by the fact that they don't HAVE to work? That they still live in their parent's houses and they don't even need to pay rent? Could it be driven by the fact that many youth today simply don't show any drive to WANT to work? How are employers going to be anxious to hire a young person today when they see the younger people coming (and going) and barely working for their wages?
What about youth who barely persist to find a job? It surprises me the amount of people who have this to say about job hunting, "Well... nobody ever calls me."
OF COURSE THEY'RE NOT GOING TO CALL YOU! They want you to call them! Employers want to see that a potential employee WANTS to work. The article of course makes no attempt to even justify that youth ARE trying to find work and failing, just that they simply can't find work and they use one Winnipeg citizen as an example of a youth struggling at large to find work without any kind of justification to show HOW he's in the boat he's in. Granted, I should be pissed at shitty journalism over shitty youth but that's, again, a different argument for a different blog entry.
I was fortunate to get called up, and hired in the same day for a job ad I responded to on Kijiji. They saw I had a lot of cooking experience and coincidentally they needed a cook. On the side of that, I was courting (yeah I am using that term) three other potential employers for work. That's an example of my drive to work, and find work. Other than when I was living in Stellarton/New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, (which has a terrible economic state by the way) I've never had a problem finding work.
I'm sure anyone could think off the top of their head of a youth they work with, or have worked with who exemplifies a lack of values in work ethic. It's not rocket science at all. The youth aren't finding jobs because they don't WANT to. There are other factors, again, not all youth are at fault, but it's the ones that simply don't give a fuck that are ruining it for the ones that are trying to build their futures outside of their parent's basements. The 14.8% Youth Unemployment is a skewed statistic that lacks any kind of analysis but then again, I shouldn't be surprised coming from The Globe and Mail.
Until next time,
PEACE!
After reading a recent article about Canada's 14.8% Youth Unemployment Rate... It got me to thinking, WHY could this be such an issue? I'm a youth, I'm turning 25, I've never had a problem finding a job and I'm even going to start attending university in September. Why are so many youth's having difficulties?
Could it be that they're lazy, unmotivated products of the Soccer Mom Generation that's coddled them to this point? Now that they're released unto the world that will NOT pat their bottoms and bend to their every whim like mommy did, they're finally getting a much needed reality check.
Could it be that the youth lack the drive, work ethic and attitude that employers want to see in potential employees? That they will turn to "mature" workers that they know will work for the money they're earning as opposed to a youth who doesn't even value the job they're trying to get?
The article in question centers around what it refers to as NEET's, Youth that are not in education, employment or training. It's actually kind of coincidental to me that this very angle the Globe is using to paint this sympathetic view of today's youth is the same angle I am using to show that Canada's youth today are lazy, unmotivated, and apathetic at large. As a youth who formerly, had no interest in going to university, it's a completely valid argument. High School destroys the drive to be educated in many teenagers (an entirely different argument all together) and it's hard to acknowledge that post-secondary education by and large is an entirely different beast. Training for jobs? You usually have to pay for that... so why bother?
The dangerous paradigm this creates is that, obviously, not ALL youth fall into this category. It's the gym class theory of one student ruining it for the entire class. We've all been there, working with someone in their late teen's or early twenties who simply coasts along. Let me rifle off some quotes and tell me if you've heard any of these ones before?
"I'm tired, I can't wait to go home..." - after they just got to work.
"Yeah I still live with my parents."
"I don't really plan on going to school" - even I was guilty of this for a long time.
Or a personal favorite "I'm going to get so stoned after work..."
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for an after work buzz on but I guess it depends on your priorities. When you get to work and all you think about is going home and getting high, there's an obvious lack of work ethic, or desire to work.
Could this percentage of Canadians (youth) who have been out of work for a year or longer be driven by the fact that they don't HAVE to work? That they still live in their parent's houses and they don't even need to pay rent? Could it be driven by the fact that many youth today simply don't show any drive to WANT to work? How are employers going to be anxious to hire a young person today when they see the younger people coming (and going) and barely working for their wages?
What about youth who barely persist to find a job? It surprises me the amount of people who have this to say about job hunting, "Well... nobody ever calls me."
OF COURSE THEY'RE NOT GOING TO CALL YOU! They want you to call them! Employers want to see that a potential employee WANTS to work. The article of course makes no attempt to even justify that youth ARE trying to find work and failing, just that they simply can't find work and they use one Winnipeg citizen as an example of a youth struggling at large to find work without any kind of justification to show HOW he's in the boat he's in. Granted, I should be pissed at shitty journalism over shitty youth but that's, again, a different argument for a different blog entry.
I was fortunate to get called up, and hired in the same day for a job ad I responded to on Kijiji. They saw I had a lot of cooking experience and coincidentally they needed a cook. On the side of that, I was courting (yeah I am using that term) three other potential employers for work. That's an example of my drive to work, and find work. Other than when I was living in Stellarton/New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, (which has a terrible economic state by the way) I've never had a problem finding work.
I'm sure anyone could think off the top of their head of a youth they work with, or have worked with who exemplifies a lack of values in work ethic. It's not rocket science at all. The youth aren't finding jobs because they don't WANT to. There are other factors, again, not all youth are at fault, but it's the ones that simply don't give a fuck that are ruining it for the ones that are trying to build their futures outside of their parent's basements. The 14.8% Youth Unemployment is a skewed statistic that lacks any kind of analysis but then again, I shouldn't be surprised coming from The Globe and Mail.
Until next time,
PEACE!
Sunday, May 13, 2012
The Crossroads
I'm not inside my own mind today... and hell, who is?
Today is Mother's Day so I'll take a moment to say Happy Mother's Day to everyone who endured having a tiny fetus in their belly for 9-ish months (unless you're Lucille Bluth) and raised a child. Congratulations are in order, today is a day to celebrate you but like every other day contrived to smother a certain someone with gratitude, you should always be thankful for your parents. You've only got the parents you've got for better or worse. I'm happy with mine.
My mom was always there for me, she still is. She never tried to make me be something that I never wanted to be, and that's the thing I love the most about my mom. Mom respected my independence, and not only that, she helped it flourish. This, among other things, is why I love my mom. She did what she had to do, and she always treated me like I was an adult. It didn't matter if I was 15, or 25...
Happy Mother's Day.
How do you top that, am I right?
Well, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. A lot of soul-searching, and a lot of thinking (yeah, I already said that.)
Nova Scotia has been an experiment, this is to be true. Like every experiment I've undergone in life, the hypothesis was proven futile. This was okay, in the end, I've met a lot of great people here and I think I've learned a lot about people, about Canada, and about the world.
What's next?
I want to go to University... Yeah that's fucking weird isn't it?
I made a pact with myself to get my shit together at 25... well, that's now fast approaching. What do I want to do? Hell, I don't really know. I think I want to get into Psychology. I've always been curious about the Human Mind. It's something really interesting, and as weird as it sounds, I may not "like" people in the traditional sense but I do like to help people, and I like to listen to people. Understanding the mind and how it works would improve my ability to understand and to help people. It's not what I imagined myself doing 10 years ago when they start to hammer home the point that "you need to think about your future!" in High School but that's kind of how it always goes, isn't it?
We will see... there is so much in the air, and as much as I would like to get started in the fall semesters I am not sure that's a realistic possibility at this time. I can't allow myself to get caught up in self-doubt. This is the first time in my life I've actually felt motivated to go to school. I need to capitalize on this and go while I want to.
I'm sick of working shitty minimum-wage jobs, I'm sick of "the grind", and I am especially sick of being on the low end of the economic food chain, so to speak. That's one thing that's really stuck out here in Nova Scotia and that's helped my plight in regards to motivation. Living in Nova Scotia has helped motivate me to want to have a better life, because holy shit. So many people here are clawing and battling through day-to-day, trying to get to the next paycheck, that next grocery order, that next case of beer in some instances. It's a depressing place in that regard, and it's especially depressing to be caught up in the middle of it.
I'm mostly sick of busting my ass, and getting nothing out of it. At least the job I have now, I feel like I'm valued as an employee.
Let me digress momentarily.
I work at Swiss Chalet now, yeah, it's glamorous. It's not like Boston Pizza or White Spot, the restaurant jobs I had out west. Well it IS, but maybe being out of the kitchen for a couple years helped change my perspective.
The weirdest thing was being told "Good Job Bryce..."
Good Job?
To go from The Verge, where all you hear about is what you're doing wrong, what you're not doing, or what you could do better (the king of negative reinforcement, no wonder everyone there is miserable as shit.) to something like that.... I literally did not know how to take a compliment. To be told "Good Job." It's something I hadn't experienced in a long time. It's weird, not going to lie.
I've been there just over a month, and I still feel like I'm holding the kitchen back at times but I've only been there a month, so I'm still in the midst of the learning curve. I thought I would be more equipped to get "up to speed" in the kitchen because of my experience but I am used to working day shifts, so really, except for White Spot (which was YEARS ago now) I never really got to stand in the heart of the volcano, so to speak. It's been a big adjustment. I think if anything it's much less stressful than it could be because of my experience. The hours and pay aren't the greatest but hey, it's a job. At least I'm not unemployed.
So yes, I'm at a genuine crossroads of life. I'm engaged, about to be a married man in less than a year. I want to get on the path to building my career because as much as I like to daydream about being a Writer, it's hard when you're not writing. I also know there's not a large probability of success, or money. I always joked that I wanted to be a "Master of Journalism" ....
Well on this path I could become a Master of Psychology, and then some!
BOOYAH!
Today is Mother's Day so I'll take a moment to say Happy Mother's Day to everyone who endured having a tiny fetus in their belly for 9-ish months (unless you're Lucille Bluth) and raised a child. Congratulations are in order, today is a day to celebrate you but like every other day contrived to smother a certain someone with gratitude, you should always be thankful for your parents. You've only got the parents you've got for better or worse. I'm happy with mine.
My mom was always there for me, she still is. She never tried to make me be something that I never wanted to be, and that's the thing I love the most about my mom. Mom respected my independence, and not only that, she helped it flourish. This, among other things, is why I love my mom. She did what she had to do, and she always treated me like I was an adult. It didn't matter if I was 15, or 25...
Happy Mother's Day.
How do you top that, am I right?
Well, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. A lot of soul-searching, and a lot of thinking (yeah, I already said that.)
Nova Scotia has been an experiment, this is to be true. Like every experiment I've undergone in life, the hypothesis was proven futile. This was okay, in the end, I've met a lot of great people here and I think I've learned a lot about people, about Canada, and about the world.
What's next?
I want to go to University... Yeah that's fucking weird isn't it?
I made a pact with myself to get my shit together at 25... well, that's now fast approaching. What do I want to do? Hell, I don't really know. I think I want to get into Psychology. I've always been curious about the Human Mind. It's something really interesting, and as weird as it sounds, I may not "like" people in the traditional sense but I do like to help people, and I like to listen to people. Understanding the mind and how it works would improve my ability to understand and to help people. It's not what I imagined myself doing 10 years ago when they start to hammer home the point that "you need to think about your future!" in High School but that's kind of how it always goes, isn't it?
We will see... there is so much in the air, and as much as I would like to get started in the fall semesters I am not sure that's a realistic possibility at this time. I can't allow myself to get caught up in self-doubt. This is the first time in my life I've actually felt motivated to go to school. I need to capitalize on this and go while I want to.
I'm sick of working shitty minimum-wage jobs, I'm sick of "the grind", and I am especially sick of being on the low end of the economic food chain, so to speak. That's one thing that's really stuck out here in Nova Scotia and that's helped my plight in regards to motivation. Living in Nova Scotia has helped motivate me to want to have a better life, because holy shit. So many people here are clawing and battling through day-to-day, trying to get to the next paycheck, that next grocery order, that next case of beer in some instances. It's a depressing place in that regard, and it's especially depressing to be caught up in the middle of it.
I'm mostly sick of busting my ass, and getting nothing out of it. At least the job I have now, I feel like I'm valued as an employee.
Let me digress momentarily.
I work at Swiss Chalet now, yeah, it's glamorous. It's not like Boston Pizza or White Spot, the restaurant jobs I had out west. Well it IS, but maybe being out of the kitchen for a couple years helped change my perspective.
The weirdest thing was being told "Good Job Bryce..."
Good Job?
To go from The Verge, where all you hear about is what you're doing wrong, what you're not doing, or what you could do better (the king of negative reinforcement, no wonder everyone there is miserable as shit.) to something like that.... I literally did not know how to take a compliment. To be told "Good Job." It's something I hadn't experienced in a long time. It's weird, not going to lie.
I've been there just over a month, and I still feel like I'm holding the kitchen back at times but I've only been there a month, so I'm still in the midst of the learning curve. I thought I would be more equipped to get "up to speed" in the kitchen because of my experience but I am used to working day shifts, so really, except for White Spot (which was YEARS ago now) I never really got to stand in the heart of the volcano, so to speak. It's been a big adjustment. I think if anything it's much less stressful than it could be because of my experience. The hours and pay aren't the greatest but hey, it's a job. At least I'm not unemployed.
So yes, I'm at a genuine crossroads of life. I'm engaged, about to be a married man in less than a year. I want to get on the path to building my career because as much as I like to daydream about being a Writer, it's hard when you're not writing. I also know there's not a large probability of success, or money. I always joked that I wanted to be a "Master of Journalism" ....
Well on this path I could become a Master of Psychology, and then some!
BOOYAH!
Friday, March 30, 2012
Mass Effect: Anticipation... (Part 3)
I'm not inside my own mind today... I recently completed Mass Effect 3 and it's like when LOST ended. Now its kind of like something's missing now that I have finished Mass Effect 3 and I know that there's not going to be more to the story. I got what I got.
If you want to know what I thought of the first two games, check out Parts 1 and 2... This will be for my thoughts on Mass Effect 3.
Again... SPOILER ALERT: I may discuss some details that some people would consider a spoiler. I will not ruin any parts of the game specifically however I may reveal important plot details that you would otherwise have to play the game to learn for yourself.
Now... Mass Effect 3 was tough because for the first time in the trilogy, I actually had to really WAIT to get my hands on it. I remember when the first teaser trailers went up, and right away it was like the excitement level was at 200%.
As I reference in part two, speculation made the wait for Mass Effect 3 borderline unbearable. I wanted to pre-order the collectors edition over a year before the game was even due out. I didn't pre-order the game, probably the best that I didn't. The anticipation was overwhelming. I was ready to finish the fight and save the galaxy.
Mass Effect 2 did not get a demo... Mass Effect 3 did. I played it, I was too eager not to. Like the game itself, the Demo took you through a brief character creation process and then thrust you into the first mission of the game. Then the game let you play parts of a mission that takes place quite a bit later in the game. This portion of the demo lets you play at a higher level in the mid 20's so you get to use your powers and your allies powers and get a better feel for the subtle changes they made in the combat of ME3.
The game came out and I was there on the front lines. The game doesn't pull any punches. Like the demo, the game begins with Reaper Forces invading Earth. You're fleeing Future Vancouver as the reapers are invading. You try to save this little boy, he's scared. You don't save him. This little boy serves as a beacon of... feelings... for the rest of the game. One of the vague sub-plots of psychological exploration that this battle and all the losses are starting to take a toll on Shepard.
Mass Effect 3 was, by and large, everything I wanted it to be. Did I get to unite the galaxy in a last ditch effort to save it? Yep! Do I get to see some old faces and make new friends along the way? Yep! Do I get to finish the fight! Yep!
Overall, and saying this without getting too personal, Mass Effect 3 accomplished what it needed to and was in no way a disappointment. That being said, it had its fair share of disappointments.
I can only speculate on production and all that. The game was delayed a good, what, six months? They took a lot of steps of fan service on this game and that is what I would like to speculate about.
To say Mass Effect Fans and BioWare have a "relationship" is almost not the best way to put it. Bottom line, Fans speak on BioWare's forum and they listen. They try their best and I think there is plenty of evidence in Mass Effect 3 that says the developers listened and tried to encorporate as many elements of fan service as they could. The best example of this is the relationship between Joker, the Normandy's pilot, and EDI, the Artificial Intelligence of the Normandy that gets its own body in Mass Effect 3 (she's one of the playable characters and one of the more interesting additions to the Cast). This relationship simply would not exist if the fans did not express their desire to see it happen. A lot of fans thought it would be a "cool" thing, and it happened. Something that belonged in the most obscure fan fiction became a reality in Mass Effect 3...
Anyway, my belief is that this relationship did more harm to Mass Effect 3 than good. I think BioWare was always aware of the huge expectations that this game had. They went to inordinate lengths to please the fans and in the wake of what I will call the EndingGate Scandal... I wouldn't be surprised if they went to more lengths to further please the fans in the wake of what I will refer to as ... moderate disdain from thee fan base over the ending of the game.
Now... again I can only speculate. I think that they had a list (maybe more figurative than literal) of moments or things they wanted to have happen to make sure you saw as many familiar faces as possible. This lead to some pretty random encounters which you can shrug off early on.
Now... I did a Lost comparison earlier. Lost, after season 4, kind of takes a turn that will lead it down the path it takes to the end of the show. I can't really explain that in more detail without writing an entire blog about LOST and... bla bla. How it relates is that Mass Effect 3's plot takes a similar path. The game starts out, like the show, rather open. Of course, the goal of "save the galaxy" is always there (this is where the lost parallel goes out the window) anyway. ME3 takes a turn toward the end of the game that steers the plot down a definite path.
Like Lost, the ending of Mass Effect 3 could not have played out without the foundation laid before it. I won't go into personal feelings or even spoil aspects of the ending because I think everyone should experience it for themselves. I think the ending of Mass Effect played out the way it did in part because they perhaps "wrote themselves into a corner" as it were with the game's plot or maybe unbeknownst to me, the plot meant to go that way. All I really want to say is that Mass Effect 1 and 2 had very meticulous plots and it was very clear how thought out those plots were. Mass Effect 3, as far as storytelling is concerned, lacks that, especially at the end of the game when it's most crucial.
For what it was, I liked the ending. It was a bit contrived, and it was certainly worth the backlash. I was about midway through the game when buzz of the ending became deafening. I took an impromptu break from the game. Partially because (due to re-playing ME 1 and 2 again) I had been on a months long Mass Effect spree and needed to play something else and partially because I didn't want my journey to end. I had no hang ups about the possibility of the ending not meeting my expectations but I was certainly hung up that my journey as Commander Shepard was coming to an end.
There was a particular part of the game that I had to re-play because the result of a choice I made was so horrific, to me at least, that I had to re-play an entire mission. A good hour of gameplay, just to make sure I got the result I wanted. That's how this story, and the characters in this game, have become so much to me that I would knowingly re-play a part of the game to have an outcome I find more pleasing rather than (knowing I can just re-play the game later) going with what outcome I was given. That's the only point in the 3 games I had to go back and do something over.
The choices you make in Mass Effect 3 are big. Galaxy saving big. It's only natural the game with the highest stakes would have some of the biggest choices for your Shepard to make.
The character development and character work of Mass Effect 3 is another thing that makes me question development because really, there's very little if not any character development outside Shepard himself (and maybe, The Illusive Man, EDI, and a couple other characters) the character impact is not nearly as prevalent in ME3 as it is in the first two games and that's not a big deal because Mass Effect 3 doesn't have to be character driven, it's been clear from the get go that this is where we fight the fight, and save the galaxy. There ARE the token character moments so it's not like the game is completely void of character growth, it's just that it takes a back seat.
Another thing that takes a backseat, unfortunately, are THE CHOICES YOU'VE ALREADY MADE... a lot of things just seemingly "happen" in Mass Effect 3 and given the games precedent for cause and effect, the gaffe of simply setting a course of action seems like a huge oversight...
Thematically, "fate" is kind of a big plot element of Mass Effect as a whole, maybe things play out the way they do because they needed to. Maybe it was fan service prioritized over something as simple as remembering who I chose to be the Human Councillor at the end of the first Mass Efffect game and oh... making sure that change is still reflected in the 3rd game just as it was in the 2nd? That's my biggest gripe and the only direct spoiler I will include. I hate how they retconned that, and there's a couple other little things too but anyway.
Mass Effect 3 was not perfect. As part of the series, I think it's the weak link just on basis of the way the game ends alone. As it stands, Mass Effect 3 was a very good video game, and had many points that define the entire series not just itself to stand apart from the other two.
The reason I started this 3 part "saga" out with mentioning Final Fantasy VII is because that the Mass Effect games evoked emotions in me that I haven't felt since playing that game, and frankly, emotions that I thought a video game would never evoke again. I developed a closeness to the characters that to see a character death is an utmost tragedy. Highs that come with battle are emotional high's playing the game and the points where the stakes are highest are some of the most emotional points of the mass effect games. I felt the entire spectrum playing this game, and really what more could you ask from a video game experience?
If you're in to Science Fiction, or Video Games, or if you like Shooters, or hell, if you just like a good story, any and all of these are great reasons to start your own adventure as Commander Shepard and get a copy of the Mass Effect games for yourself. You won't be disappointed! Don't listen to the hype, or anti-hype, just play it and experience it for yourself. Coming to your own conclusions is infinitely more rewarding than not doing so because you read something that turned you off of the game. Mass Effect is literally a one of a kind video game and will likely go down as BioWare's defining accomplishment as Game Developers and that is as huge a compliment as I can think to give!
If you want to know what I thought of the first two games, check out Parts 1 and 2... This will be for my thoughts on Mass Effect 3.
Again... SPOILER ALERT: I may discuss some details that some people would consider a spoiler. I will not ruin any parts of the game specifically however I may reveal important plot details that you would otherwise have to play the game to learn for yourself.
Now... Mass Effect 3 was tough because for the first time in the trilogy, I actually had to really WAIT to get my hands on it. I remember when the first teaser trailers went up, and right away it was like the excitement level was at 200%.
As I reference in part two, speculation made the wait for Mass Effect 3 borderline unbearable. I wanted to pre-order the collectors edition over a year before the game was even due out. I didn't pre-order the game, probably the best that I didn't. The anticipation was overwhelming. I was ready to finish the fight and save the galaxy.
Mass Effect 2 did not get a demo... Mass Effect 3 did. I played it, I was too eager not to. Like the game itself, the Demo took you through a brief character creation process and then thrust you into the first mission of the game. Then the game let you play parts of a mission that takes place quite a bit later in the game. This portion of the demo lets you play at a higher level in the mid 20's so you get to use your powers and your allies powers and get a better feel for the subtle changes they made in the combat of ME3.
The game came out and I was there on the front lines. The game doesn't pull any punches. Like the demo, the game begins with Reaper Forces invading Earth. You're fleeing Future Vancouver as the reapers are invading. You try to save this little boy, he's scared. You don't save him. This little boy serves as a beacon of... feelings... for the rest of the game. One of the vague sub-plots of psychological exploration that this battle and all the losses are starting to take a toll on Shepard.
Mass Effect 3 was, by and large, everything I wanted it to be. Did I get to unite the galaxy in a last ditch effort to save it? Yep! Do I get to see some old faces and make new friends along the way? Yep! Do I get to finish the fight! Yep!
Overall, and saying this without getting too personal, Mass Effect 3 accomplished what it needed to and was in no way a disappointment. That being said, it had its fair share of disappointments.
I can only speculate on production and all that. The game was delayed a good, what, six months? They took a lot of steps of fan service on this game and that is what I would like to speculate about.
To say Mass Effect Fans and BioWare have a "relationship" is almost not the best way to put it. Bottom line, Fans speak on BioWare's forum and they listen. They try their best and I think there is plenty of evidence in Mass Effect 3 that says the developers listened and tried to encorporate as many elements of fan service as they could. The best example of this is the relationship between Joker, the Normandy's pilot, and EDI, the Artificial Intelligence of the Normandy that gets its own body in Mass Effect 3 (she's one of the playable characters and one of the more interesting additions to the Cast). This relationship simply would not exist if the fans did not express their desire to see it happen. A lot of fans thought it would be a "cool" thing, and it happened. Something that belonged in the most obscure fan fiction became a reality in Mass Effect 3...
Anyway, my belief is that this relationship did more harm to Mass Effect 3 than good. I think BioWare was always aware of the huge expectations that this game had. They went to inordinate lengths to please the fans and in the wake of what I will call the EndingGate Scandal... I wouldn't be surprised if they went to more lengths to further please the fans in the wake of what I will refer to as ... moderate disdain from thee fan base over the ending of the game.
Now... again I can only speculate. I think that they had a list (maybe more figurative than literal) of moments or things they wanted to have happen to make sure you saw as many familiar faces as possible. This lead to some pretty random encounters which you can shrug off early on.
Now... I did a Lost comparison earlier. Lost, after season 4, kind of takes a turn that will lead it down the path it takes to the end of the show. I can't really explain that in more detail without writing an entire blog about LOST and... bla bla. How it relates is that Mass Effect 3's plot takes a similar path. The game starts out, like the show, rather open. Of course, the goal of "save the galaxy" is always there (this is where the lost parallel goes out the window) anyway. ME3 takes a turn toward the end of the game that steers the plot down a definite path.
Like Lost, the ending of Mass Effect 3 could not have played out without the foundation laid before it. I won't go into personal feelings or even spoil aspects of the ending because I think everyone should experience it for themselves. I think the ending of Mass Effect played out the way it did in part because they perhaps "wrote themselves into a corner" as it were with the game's plot or maybe unbeknownst to me, the plot meant to go that way. All I really want to say is that Mass Effect 1 and 2 had very meticulous plots and it was very clear how thought out those plots were. Mass Effect 3, as far as storytelling is concerned, lacks that, especially at the end of the game when it's most crucial.
For what it was, I liked the ending. It was a bit contrived, and it was certainly worth the backlash. I was about midway through the game when buzz of the ending became deafening. I took an impromptu break from the game. Partially because (due to re-playing ME 1 and 2 again) I had been on a months long Mass Effect spree and needed to play something else and partially because I didn't want my journey to end. I had no hang ups about the possibility of the ending not meeting my expectations but I was certainly hung up that my journey as Commander Shepard was coming to an end.
There was a particular part of the game that I had to re-play because the result of a choice I made was so horrific, to me at least, that I had to re-play an entire mission. A good hour of gameplay, just to make sure I got the result I wanted. That's how this story, and the characters in this game, have become so much to me that I would knowingly re-play a part of the game to have an outcome I find more pleasing rather than (knowing I can just re-play the game later) going with what outcome I was given. That's the only point in the 3 games I had to go back and do something over.
The choices you make in Mass Effect 3 are big. Galaxy saving big. It's only natural the game with the highest stakes would have some of the biggest choices for your Shepard to make.
The character development and character work of Mass Effect 3 is another thing that makes me question development because really, there's very little if not any character development outside Shepard himself (and maybe, The Illusive Man, EDI, and a couple other characters) the character impact is not nearly as prevalent in ME3 as it is in the first two games and that's not a big deal because Mass Effect 3 doesn't have to be character driven, it's been clear from the get go that this is where we fight the fight, and save the galaxy. There ARE the token character moments so it's not like the game is completely void of character growth, it's just that it takes a back seat.
Another thing that takes a backseat, unfortunately, are THE CHOICES YOU'VE ALREADY MADE... a lot of things just seemingly "happen" in Mass Effect 3 and given the games precedent for cause and effect, the gaffe of simply setting a course of action seems like a huge oversight...
Thematically, "fate" is kind of a big plot element of Mass Effect as a whole, maybe things play out the way they do because they needed to. Maybe it was fan service prioritized over something as simple as remembering who I chose to be the Human Councillor at the end of the first Mass Efffect game and oh... making sure that change is still reflected in the 3rd game just as it was in the 2nd? That's my biggest gripe and the only direct spoiler I will include. I hate how they retconned that, and there's a couple other little things too but anyway.
Mass Effect 3 was not perfect. As part of the series, I think it's the weak link just on basis of the way the game ends alone. As it stands, Mass Effect 3 was a very good video game, and had many points that define the entire series not just itself to stand apart from the other two.
The reason I started this 3 part "saga" out with mentioning Final Fantasy VII is because that the Mass Effect games evoked emotions in me that I haven't felt since playing that game, and frankly, emotions that I thought a video game would never evoke again. I developed a closeness to the characters that to see a character death is an utmost tragedy. Highs that come with battle are emotional high's playing the game and the points where the stakes are highest are some of the most emotional points of the mass effect games. I felt the entire spectrum playing this game, and really what more could you ask from a video game experience?
If you're in to Science Fiction, or Video Games, or if you like Shooters, or hell, if you just like a good story, any and all of these are great reasons to start your own adventure as Commander Shepard and get a copy of the Mass Effect games for yourself. You won't be disappointed! Don't listen to the hype, or anti-hype, just play it and experience it for yourself. Coming to your own conclusions is infinitely more rewarding than not doing so because you read something that turned you off of the game. Mass Effect is literally a one of a kind video game and will likely go down as BioWare's defining accomplishment as Game Developers and that is as huge a compliment as I can think to give!
Mass Effect: Cause And ...Effect (Part Two)
I'm not inside my own mind today... This is part two of a, PROBABLY, three part blog on Mass Effect. Yeah it's going to take me a few blogs just to talk about ONE series of video games. I just completed Mass Effect 3, there's lots of buzz about that game so I'll just say to get the gist of part one, read it. I am kind of just taking off where I left off as this is part two.
WARNING: I will be discussing VAGUE plot elements. I will NOT be ruining any key moments of the game itself but I will be ruining points of the game per-se that you would otherwise have to play to find out about. General plot stuff, nothing too "WHY DID YOU RUIN THAT" okay? I promise!
SO... I just stopped Saren right? I'm Commander Shepard, on top of the world. Following the first game, you could say I was on a bit of a high. The game did a great job of making you feel like your efforts in the end of the game were really balls to the walls and that everything depended on what you did in those final moments. The drama, tension, it was perfect and really at that time was probably one of the best endings to a video game I had played, and since then, it stands as one of the best endings to a video game period in my opinion.
There was also a eagerness because now that I had finally experienced Mass Effect, played it through, I had something big to look forward to. Mass Effect 2 was coming!
Mass Effect 2 was big because you got to import your character from the first game and those big important choices you had to make would shape and affect the game as you played through Mass Effect 2. They eventually made a DLC interactive comic so that, if you wanted, you didn't HAVE to play through the first game to make those important choices, you could make them in the comic and then the game would reflect those choices. You, to my knowledge, didn't get the in-game perks that you would typically get with importing a Mass Effect 1 character.
There was no demo, which at the time made me kind of sad. I was playing BioWare's current release at the time, a fantasy game called Dragon Age: Origins which was a decent game in it's own right, it wasn't quite filling my Mass Effect cravings...
Mass Effect 2 starts out with a bang, we'll say. You're shot out of the sky, presumably dead, and brought back to life by Cerberus, an organization that you learn in the first game is somewhere in the realm between "Outside The Box" and "Extremist". You're introduced to a man named The Illusive Man, voiced by Martin Sheen, who is the "leader" of Cerberus. He wants you to help him learn about these beings called The Collectors who are abducting Human Colonies. Sure, sounds reasonable. He brought you back to life, you like humanity, so you the enemy of your enemy is your friend right?
Long story short, you learn the Collectors are in cahoots with The Reapers (They're baaaack!) so you're thrust once again into the forefront of a battle to keep the Galaxy safe from the Reaper Threat. The Illusive Man isn't going to leave you hanging though, he's given you a number of dossiers of potential allies to recruit for your Suicide Mission against the Collectors. You run into some old friends too from Mass Effect 1 along the way.
Now, Mass Effect 2, as a game, I think it's the best of the 3. It gets some flak for its step back from RPG elements in favor for making the game a more forward shooter but that doesn't mean that Mass Effect 2 isn't, on it's own, one of the best RPG's that have been made in this century, if not among the all time great RPG Video Games.
The way the game keeps its RPG-ness alive is probably more in the background. The squad-mate combat is refined. You can tell your AI teammates to actually position themselves in different locations. You couldn't do this in ME1 which made things frustrating at times but in 2, you could be strategic, and use flanks and combat tactics to your advantage. Leveling up yourself and your squadmates was also simplified but the game had more than double the squadmates of ME1 so this made sense to me. To me, combat seemed easier because the squad mates seemed more effective than in Mass Effect 1.
Of course, Mass Effect just wouldn't be Mass Effect without making huge choices and they up the ante big time in Mass Effect 2. You're forced to make choices that effect entire alien races, choices that will gain you new friends or new enemies and of course, the weight of your choices could mean life itself.
The end of the game? Well they didn't slouch there either. The Suicide Mission was probably better than the end of Mass Effect 1 simply because it was as do-or-die as it gets. This was also one of the more RPG-centric parts of the game as well. Using your squad-mates strengths and weaknesses, you assign your allies to different important tasks of the suicide mission. Their performance in their assignment, as well as yours, affects who lives or dies in the mission itself (so potentially, who will or will not be there for Mass Effect 3.) It was a great way to end the game and Mass Effect 2 ended on a strong note.
Now the game ended with a bang, maybe... depending on what choice you made... and what followed the end of Mass Effect 2 was just a perfect storm of speculation.
With Mass Effect 3 forthcoming, everything was analyzed. Where could the choices you made lead you in the third game? Fan speculation was awesome, I loved reading the ideas people had and the theories that fans came up with. Their in-game evidence and their own speculations in regards to what that could lead to in the third game.
My personal favorite has to be the "Worst Possible Playthrough" (Can be read here (contains numerous spoilers)) In which one such fan took it upon themselves to make all the worst choices they could through the first two games to ensure they had the greatest potential to fail in the third game. All I can say in this regard, thanks to the power of retrospect, is that it's a complete shame this didn't play out as well as it could have (and I will get to that in Part Three.) but the fact that the theme of choice in the game of course can inspire the worst in people is something I love to see in video games.
The thing that sets the Mass Effect games apart from the rest is that things like this CAN happen. You can try to do the WORST job you can to ensure a specific result. How many games can you really do that with outside of the Bethesda games (Morrowind/Fallout 3) and I'm not sure about those because I haven't played them.
Due to the nature of duality in the game (Renegade/Paragon choices) I've always tried to play through each game twice. Because of this, I've beat the Mass Effect games (The first two) more times than any other game I can think of. I've beat Mass Effect 1, 4 times and I've beaten Mass Effect 2, 3 times. The reason I've beaten Mass Effect 1 one extra time is that part-way through my initial Playthrough of Mass Effect 2, I realized that my lackadaisical nature toward this duality (I had casually picked both renegade and paragon choices in ME1) had impacted my character and limited my potential off the start.. Because of this I re-beat the first game to import my "pure paragon" Shepard into the game for all the perks. I know... I know...
Mass Effect 2 did everything Mass Effect did well, BETTER. Especially character work! All your favorite characters make a return appearance in one way or another in Mass Effect 2, some are even squad mates. These rich characters like Garrus, Tali and Wrex continue to grow in Mass Effect 2 while you meet some new interesting faces like Thane, Mordin and Grunt. Just as with the first game, you find yourself attached to these characters and it helps shape your own Mass Effect journey as you learn about these new characters and learn things about characters like Garrus and Tali you never knew. It helps continue to flesh out the world without making it feel like a forced sequel, it's like a natural extension of the first game.
Mass Effect 2 was an absolute triumph... and it made what followed difficult for a lot of people. How did it make me feel? Well... you'll have to read Part Three for my thoughts on Mass Effect 3!
WARNING: I will be discussing VAGUE plot elements. I will NOT be ruining any key moments of the game itself but I will be ruining points of the game per-se that you would otherwise have to play to find out about. General plot stuff, nothing too "WHY DID YOU RUIN THAT" okay? I promise!
SO... I just stopped Saren right? I'm Commander Shepard, on top of the world. Following the first game, you could say I was on a bit of a high. The game did a great job of making you feel like your efforts in the end of the game were really balls to the walls and that everything depended on what you did in those final moments. The drama, tension, it was perfect and really at that time was probably one of the best endings to a video game I had played, and since then, it stands as one of the best endings to a video game period in my opinion.
There was also a eagerness because now that I had finally experienced Mass Effect, played it through, I had something big to look forward to. Mass Effect 2 was coming!
Mass Effect 2 was big because you got to import your character from the first game and those big important choices you had to make would shape and affect the game as you played through Mass Effect 2. They eventually made a DLC interactive comic so that, if you wanted, you didn't HAVE to play through the first game to make those important choices, you could make them in the comic and then the game would reflect those choices. You, to my knowledge, didn't get the in-game perks that you would typically get with importing a Mass Effect 1 character.
There was no demo, which at the time made me kind of sad. I was playing BioWare's current release at the time, a fantasy game called Dragon Age: Origins which was a decent game in it's own right, it wasn't quite filling my Mass Effect cravings...
Mass Effect 2 starts out with a bang, we'll say. You're shot out of the sky, presumably dead, and brought back to life by Cerberus, an organization that you learn in the first game is somewhere in the realm between "Outside The Box" and "Extremist". You're introduced to a man named The Illusive Man, voiced by Martin Sheen, who is the "leader" of Cerberus. He wants you to help him learn about these beings called The Collectors who are abducting Human Colonies. Sure, sounds reasonable. He brought you back to life, you like humanity, so you the enemy of your enemy is your friend right?
Long story short, you learn the Collectors are in cahoots with The Reapers (They're baaaack!) so you're thrust once again into the forefront of a battle to keep the Galaxy safe from the Reaper Threat. The Illusive Man isn't going to leave you hanging though, he's given you a number of dossiers of potential allies to recruit for your Suicide Mission against the Collectors. You run into some old friends too from Mass Effect 1 along the way.
Now, Mass Effect 2, as a game, I think it's the best of the 3. It gets some flak for its step back from RPG elements in favor for making the game a more forward shooter but that doesn't mean that Mass Effect 2 isn't, on it's own, one of the best RPG's that have been made in this century, if not among the all time great RPG Video Games.
The way the game keeps its RPG-ness alive is probably more in the background. The squad-mate combat is refined. You can tell your AI teammates to actually position themselves in different locations. You couldn't do this in ME1 which made things frustrating at times but in 2, you could be strategic, and use flanks and combat tactics to your advantage. Leveling up yourself and your squadmates was also simplified but the game had more than double the squadmates of ME1 so this made sense to me. To me, combat seemed easier because the squad mates seemed more effective than in Mass Effect 1.
Of course, Mass Effect just wouldn't be Mass Effect without making huge choices and they up the ante big time in Mass Effect 2. You're forced to make choices that effect entire alien races, choices that will gain you new friends or new enemies and of course, the weight of your choices could mean life itself.
The end of the game? Well they didn't slouch there either. The Suicide Mission was probably better than the end of Mass Effect 1 simply because it was as do-or-die as it gets. This was also one of the more RPG-centric parts of the game as well. Using your squad-mates strengths and weaknesses, you assign your allies to different important tasks of the suicide mission. Their performance in their assignment, as well as yours, affects who lives or dies in the mission itself (so potentially, who will or will not be there for Mass Effect 3.) It was a great way to end the game and Mass Effect 2 ended on a strong note.
Now the game ended with a bang, maybe... depending on what choice you made... and what followed the end of Mass Effect 2 was just a perfect storm of speculation.
With Mass Effect 3 forthcoming, everything was analyzed. Where could the choices you made lead you in the third game? Fan speculation was awesome, I loved reading the ideas people had and the theories that fans came up with. Their in-game evidence and their own speculations in regards to what that could lead to in the third game.
My personal favorite has to be the "Worst Possible Playthrough" (Can be read here (contains numerous spoilers)) In which one such fan took it upon themselves to make all the worst choices they could through the first two games to ensure they had the greatest potential to fail in the third game. All I can say in this regard, thanks to the power of retrospect, is that it's a complete shame this didn't play out as well as it could have (and I will get to that in Part Three.) but the fact that the theme of choice in the game of course can inspire the worst in people is something I love to see in video games.
The thing that sets the Mass Effect games apart from the rest is that things like this CAN happen. You can try to do the WORST job you can to ensure a specific result. How many games can you really do that with outside of the Bethesda games (Morrowind/Fallout 3) and I'm not sure about those because I haven't played them.
Due to the nature of duality in the game (Renegade/Paragon choices) I've always tried to play through each game twice. Because of this, I've beat the Mass Effect games (The first two) more times than any other game I can think of. I've beat Mass Effect 1, 4 times and I've beaten Mass Effect 2, 3 times. The reason I've beaten Mass Effect 1 one extra time is that part-way through my initial Playthrough of Mass Effect 2, I realized that my lackadaisical nature toward this duality (I had casually picked both renegade and paragon choices in ME1) had impacted my character and limited my potential off the start.. Because of this I re-beat the first game to import my "pure paragon" Shepard into the game for all the perks. I know... I know...
Mass Effect 2 did everything Mass Effect did well, BETTER. Especially character work! All your favorite characters make a return appearance in one way or another in Mass Effect 2, some are even squad mates. These rich characters like Garrus, Tali and Wrex continue to grow in Mass Effect 2 while you meet some new interesting faces like Thane, Mordin and Grunt. Just as with the first game, you find yourself attached to these characters and it helps shape your own Mass Effect journey as you learn about these new characters and learn things about characters like Garrus and Tali you never knew. It helps continue to flesh out the world without making it feel like a forced sequel, it's like a natural extension of the first game.
Mass Effect 2 was an absolute triumph... and it made what followed difficult for a lot of people. How did it make me feel? Well... you'll have to read Part Three for my thoughts on Mass Effect 3!
Mass Effect: First Contact (Part One)
I'm not inside my own mind today... I recently fought the fight, I saved the galaxy. Commander Bryce Sheppard defied the odds, defied what seemed to very well be FATE to unite the galaxy and stop the forces of evil...
Of course, what I'm trying to say is I finally finished Mass Effect 3. There are a lot of emotion's I'm currently feeling so I think it's best to just start at the beginning.
How far back do we really want to go?
Let's go to to 1998.
I would have been 10 or 11, just got my first Sony Playstation. Now I used to take what little money I could scam out of my mother the odd weekend to rent video games at a store called The Jolly Gamesman. Typically I would rent sports games. This time was different, a game jumped out at me in particular.
It was called Final Fantasy VII...
Now I had played Final Fantasy games before, mainly Final Fantasy II for my Super Nintendo. This was a game I really enjoyed so surely the 7th "Final" fantasy would be worth a try as well right?
Little did I know I would be starting an adventure that would go unparalleled in my personal mythos. The tale of Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and AVALANCHE as they take on the evil SHINRA corporation to save the world was one that set a standard that would take decades to even come close to seeing met again by a video game.
Lets fast forward to 2007... My friend Geoff told me about this game called Mass Effect and honestly I should have taken his suggestion with a little more weight than I did. For a long time, Geoff tried to get me into this band you may have heard of called RUSH. I resisted for the longest time but Rush would eventually become one of my top favorite bands.
It was a long time between when Geoff first told me of Mass Effect and when I would actually play it. Years, as a matter of fact. Probably AT LEAST two.
I found Mass Effect for the unstoppable price of twenty dollars at Staples after I moved to Nova Scotia. Starting it out, I wasn't sure what to expect really.
Let me digress momentarily with a little bit of background: I've never really been into science fiction. Other than watching the majority of Star Trek: Voyager in the days when I only had two channels of TV to watch, I hadn't really enjoyed sci-fi outside say, Star Wars. I didn't exactly go out of my way for it either. Coincidentally, BioWare, the developers of Mass Effect, made some very good Star Wars games you may have heard of called The Knights of The Old Republic (As well as the recently released MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic).
For those of you who have never played Mass Effect, I will try to keep these as spoiler free as possible. I WILL discuss plot elements of the games but I will TRY to refrain from ruining any parts of the games that I wouldn't want ruined for myself. IF you wish to remain blissfully ignorant to any of the plot points of MASS EFFECT 1 than please do not read any further. I will let you know when it's safe to read again. Mass Effect takes place in the future, in the 2100's. Now, technology moves very fast in this world. Humans have JUST discovered the technology for faster than light travel which allowed them to explore the universe. In 30 years, Humanity has 'earned a place' among the galactic civilization which houses numerous alien species. This is something that has always made me raise an eyebrow. Humans can barely co-exist with each other and yet we somehow can peacefully co-exist with numerous alien races?
Okay, okay... it's just a video game. Anyway, YOU are Commander Sheppard. As the game begins, you go through a brief character creation process to "personalize" your Sheppard. You start out on The Normandy as it's heading toward a planet called Eden Prime. You soon learn things are not what they seem and before you know it you're on a race across the galaxy to stop a rogue named Saren from enacting his evil plan. Saren has become indoctrinated by a force known as The Reapers, a sentient race that is more or less the purveyors of a destruction cycle of genocide that takes place once a species has reached its apex of evolution. Sheppard, of course, takes exception to this.
OKAY... this is where I stop revealing plot points, you are safe.Now Mass Effect 1 takes a bit of time to get going, there's an epilogue that takes about a half-hour to an hour to complete and then by the time you're actually given free reign to roam the galaxy you have already played for close to two hours. A lot of people I've tried to get into the game seem to have a hard time getting past this early lull in the game but once you get past this you are brought to a whole galaxy to explore.
Mass Effect drew me in hard with its emphasis on the characters. Early on as you meet Garrus, Tali and Wrex, you are introduced to the diversity of life the Mass Effect universe has to offer but you're also introduced to a game that places heavy emphasis on Character Development which directly affects the player experience. You grow yourself attached to these various characters as they aid you through your seemingly impossible journey. These characters and their points of view, racial "quirks" and hatreds toward each other (such as the volatility between the Krogan and everyone, as well as the Quarian and the Geth) help shape a world as complex and unique as the one we live in. This suspension of disbelief is so important in any science fiction or "futuristic" setting. It's the reasons shows like Star Trek and Babylon 5 were so popular.
In the game you make choices that lives depend on, the decisions you make in the game could affect thousands of lives and these choices are not made easily. As Commander Sheppard, you are in the forefront of a battle for the galaxy in Mass Effect and you are thrust into some sticky situations and these situations are not weighed lightly. When most games simply make you a facilitator for an event to happen, Mass Effect is making you as the player, literally and directly impact the game you are playing when so many games just take you on a ride like a roller coaster. When you're drawn into the conflicts of the game, these choices you're forced to make become harder and harder and as a lovely side-effect you are pulled deeper into the game's mesmerizing atmosphere.
When I completed Mass Effect 1, it was mere months before Mass Effect 2 was due to be released. Now that I knew I had something to look forward to that wasn't another Hockey, Baseball or Football game, I was VERY excited. Little did I know what kind of rabbit hole I was crawling in to...
TO BE CONTINUED....
Of course, what I'm trying to say is I finally finished Mass Effect 3. There are a lot of emotion's I'm currently feeling so I think it's best to just start at the beginning.
How far back do we really want to go?
Let's go to to 1998.
I would have been 10 or 11, just got my first Sony Playstation. Now I used to take what little money I could scam out of my mother the odd weekend to rent video games at a store called The Jolly Gamesman. Typically I would rent sports games. This time was different, a game jumped out at me in particular.
It was called Final Fantasy VII...
Now I had played Final Fantasy games before, mainly Final Fantasy II for my Super Nintendo. This was a game I really enjoyed so surely the 7th "Final" fantasy would be worth a try as well right?
Little did I know I would be starting an adventure that would go unparalleled in my personal mythos. The tale of Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and AVALANCHE as they take on the evil SHINRA corporation to save the world was one that set a standard that would take decades to even come close to seeing met again by a video game.
Lets fast forward to 2007... My friend Geoff told me about this game called Mass Effect and honestly I should have taken his suggestion with a little more weight than I did. For a long time, Geoff tried to get me into this band you may have heard of called RUSH. I resisted for the longest time but Rush would eventually become one of my top favorite bands.
It was a long time between when Geoff first told me of Mass Effect and when I would actually play it. Years, as a matter of fact. Probably AT LEAST two.
I found Mass Effect for the unstoppable price of twenty dollars at Staples after I moved to Nova Scotia. Starting it out, I wasn't sure what to expect really.
Let me digress momentarily with a little bit of background: I've never really been into science fiction. Other than watching the majority of Star Trek: Voyager in the days when I only had two channels of TV to watch, I hadn't really enjoyed sci-fi outside say, Star Wars. I didn't exactly go out of my way for it either. Coincidentally, BioWare, the developers of Mass Effect, made some very good Star Wars games you may have heard of called The Knights of The Old Republic (As well as the recently released MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic).
For those of you who have never played Mass Effect, I will try to keep these as spoiler free as possible. I WILL discuss plot elements of the games but I will TRY to refrain from ruining any parts of the games that I wouldn't want ruined for myself. IF you wish to remain blissfully ignorant to any of the plot points of MASS EFFECT 1 than please do not read any further. I will let you know when it's safe to read again. Mass Effect takes place in the future, in the 2100's. Now, technology moves very fast in this world. Humans have JUST discovered the technology for faster than light travel which allowed them to explore the universe. In 30 years, Humanity has 'earned a place' among the galactic civilization which houses numerous alien species. This is something that has always made me raise an eyebrow. Humans can barely co-exist with each other and yet we somehow can peacefully co-exist with numerous alien races?
Okay, okay... it's just a video game. Anyway, YOU are Commander Sheppard. As the game begins, you go through a brief character creation process to "personalize" your Sheppard. You start out on The Normandy as it's heading toward a planet called Eden Prime. You soon learn things are not what they seem and before you know it you're on a race across the galaxy to stop a rogue named Saren from enacting his evil plan. Saren has become indoctrinated by a force known as The Reapers, a sentient race that is more or less the purveyors of a destruction cycle of genocide that takes place once a species has reached its apex of evolution. Sheppard, of course, takes exception to this.
OKAY... this is where I stop revealing plot points, you are safe.Now Mass Effect 1 takes a bit of time to get going, there's an epilogue that takes about a half-hour to an hour to complete and then by the time you're actually given free reign to roam the galaxy you have already played for close to two hours. A lot of people I've tried to get into the game seem to have a hard time getting past this early lull in the game but once you get past this you are brought to a whole galaxy to explore.
Mass Effect drew me in hard with its emphasis on the characters. Early on as you meet Garrus, Tali and Wrex, you are introduced to the diversity of life the Mass Effect universe has to offer but you're also introduced to a game that places heavy emphasis on Character Development which directly affects the player experience. You grow yourself attached to these various characters as they aid you through your seemingly impossible journey. These characters and their points of view, racial "quirks" and hatreds toward each other (such as the volatility between the Krogan and everyone, as well as the Quarian and the Geth) help shape a world as complex and unique as the one we live in. This suspension of disbelief is so important in any science fiction or "futuristic" setting. It's the reasons shows like Star Trek and Babylon 5 were so popular.
In the game you make choices that lives depend on, the decisions you make in the game could affect thousands of lives and these choices are not made easily. As Commander Sheppard, you are in the forefront of a battle for the galaxy in Mass Effect and you are thrust into some sticky situations and these situations are not weighed lightly. When most games simply make you a facilitator for an event to happen, Mass Effect is making you as the player, literally and directly impact the game you are playing when so many games just take you on a ride like a roller coaster. When you're drawn into the conflicts of the game, these choices you're forced to make become harder and harder and as a lovely side-effect you are pulled deeper into the game's mesmerizing atmosphere.
When I completed Mass Effect 1, it was mere months before Mass Effect 2 was due to be released. Now that I knew I had something to look forward to that wasn't another Hockey, Baseball or Football game, I was VERY excited. Little did I know what kind of rabbit hole I was crawling in to...
TO BE CONTINUED....
Monday, February 13, 2012
The Real Slim Shady
I'm not inside my own mind today...this blog might be kind of corny but I'm trying to make a point with this one I PROMISE!!!
I want to talk about someone important, someone who has broken borders and paved roads with his words and actions. I'm talking about Marshall Mathers, aka, Eminem, aka Slim Shady. Say what you will, Eminem is a polarizing figure of this generation and he is a modern day beacon of freedom of speech.
Personally, Eminem has been kind of important. I remember being in 6th grade, 11 years old. Sitting in the school library, the group of kids I was sitting with was talking about this "M&M" person... naturally being a loser kid, I bluffed my way into the conversation as they were surely as ignorant to this person as I was... maybe not though. I wanted to be "in" you know how it is when you're a dumb kid and that stupid shit matters.
Allow me to digress, my parents didn't bat an eyelash when I got my first Eminem CD... I don't know why. I mean let me really think about it for a moment. One time, I was younger by the way, after I just got Rob Zombie's "Hellbilly Deluxe" as a kid, I remember my father having this conversation with me.
Dad: "Do you really think you should be listening to this?"
Me: "It's just music..."
My father pretty much left it at that. My dad let me and my friend Billy listen to his Dennis Leary, No Cure For Cancer CD when we were like 13-14 "Don't let your mother know I let you listen to this." He said, hehehe. I'm glad he did let me listen to it and let me mention this is probably AFTER I got into Eminem... I mean I'm far from "messed up" but who is really normal these days right? My point is, my parents addressed the issue when it was apparent. I was what, probably 11-12, well before the time I was starting to actually listen to Eminem's music instead of pretending I was.
So The Marshall Marshall Mathers LP came out, and I had to have it, I bought it and I was listening to it. Honestly, I bought it myself, (as a kid, crazy I know) I was buying things for myself at that age though Mom would let me go to the mall as long as I wasn't going alone (and sometimes I could. I was a pretty independent teen) I would get video games on the occasions I had enough money or what have you. The world was a different place in the 90's... I mean kids might be able to buy CD's with graphic language on them but I don't now I'm not 13 anymore.
His lyrics were certainly extreme. Songs about killing the mother of his kid, songs about robbing banks, doing drugs, hell. I don't think that album really has one sorta mellow song... There's one of my personal favorites, Ammityville, which is a blood anthem for Detroit boasting it as Murder Capitol of America (it was again this year if I'm not mistaken...) so yes at this point Eminem was a real wealth of lyrical content
In Grade 8, I was doing homework at a classmate's house, he had Eminem's first "Slim Shady" CD, aka the one I hadn't heard yet. IT was even darker, I could see why he was such a big deal when he first burst onto the scene because some of his music was truly dark. However songs like Role Model and Just Don't Give A Fuck remain personal favorites to this day as well as many other songs from that album. His music wasn't changing me albeit, I was developing my apathy for public school at that age... that's another blog for another time.
Eminem started out as a grotesque beast... something blatant, in your face, something diabolical... it was this pure darkness that almost kind of looks like a metaphor for the late 90's as a whole with how popular violence, sex, etc was on television during that time, Eminem... at least not directly, was a part of something and he didn't know his music was going to grow and last beyond that... He was cashing in on his 15 minutes.
How was I to interpret his music, indeed I was one of the kids he was so often citing as to influencing in his music but I didn't feel like he was portrayed as to making someone my age feel, in fact it was quite the opposite. I always admired Eminem for his ability to just speak his mind and say what he wants. He has used his music to bash George Bush and the US Government, the Media, Parents and Parenting, he's called out other rappers, he's spoken about himself (maybe?) and sure he's written borderline fantasy raps about killing, drug abuse, rape, etc, because he wants to offend you. Anyone who cant see through the Slim Shady facade is the very person he's trying to offend. I've always appreciated and respected Eminem because of his attitude (warped as it may be) toward free speech, it affected me at a young age without even really realizing it and I am better for it today.
It's not like I would go around singing the Eminem lyrics... are you kidding me? I wanted to KEEP listening to it, the last thing I was going to do was let Mom catch me blasting Criminal casually in my bedroom at 14. I think there are metal bands that raise equal eyebrows but Eminem has a reputation, especially back then, the last thing I wanted was Mom taking that CD away. I laugh about it now but if she heard the songs she probably would have questioned me about Eminem at the very least.
Allow me to digress once more... One time I was walking to work (I'm about... 20-21 in this story so fast forward.) I'm walking down passed The Lodge Motel on my way to Boston Pizza, I'm singing Everything Ends by Slipknot about as loud as someone can sing a hate anthem like that. There's a guy on the second level having a smoke, he sees me as walk by singing/butchering the words of this song, I took a look, he was speechless. There was an amusement this gave me, the gratification was something I think is somewhat similar to the feeling Eminem gets out of pissing off the entire world with his lyrical content. That's just me taking a guess... I don't know him. I don't know if I could ever feel comfortable doing something like that, singing along with a Slipknot song that has some of the worst lyrics of any of their songs and proudly boast every word from my voice box... Not without having a little bit of Slim Shady in me, so to speak.
I'm sure Eminem hasn't just affected me. There are too few people that can really speak to my age group, I'm still relatively young, only 24, and I am sure lots of kids are blasting Slim Shady on their iPods behind their parents backs just like I did. How his music affects them is really not up to Eminem, it's up to the values that have been instilled upon the child from their parents and the kids ability to realize that he's just a rapper and the bottom line is he's there to enjoy... if it's wrong to take joy from something like Eminem than I don't want to be right!
This generation especially has too few people we can really look at and say "they are an embodiment of the freedom of speech I like to have." Everywhere you look, its celebrities, drug addicts, murders, bad, bad, bad, negative, negative, negative, there's never anything good in the news anymore unless it's a "recovery" story about some bullshit celebrity or nobody that isn't worth the airtime they're given, that's a different story....
Bottom line, it's people like Eminem that I respect for saying it how it is, for saying what they want to say the way they want to say it, and simply because we can. There are too few people in this world with the courage to do so.
There's a little Slim Shady in all of us... at least so I'm told... until next time.
PEACE.
I want to talk about someone important, someone who has broken borders and paved roads with his words and actions. I'm talking about Marshall Mathers, aka, Eminem, aka Slim Shady. Say what you will, Eminem is a polarizing figure of this generation and he is a modern day beacon of freedom of speech.
Personally, Eminem has been kind of important. I remember being in 6th grade, 11 years old. Sitting in the school library, the group of kids I was sitting with was talking about this "M&M" person... naturally being a loser kid, I bluffed my way into the conversation as they were surely as ignorant to this person as I was... maybe not though. I wanted to be "in" you know how it is when you're a dumb kid and that stupid shit matters.
Allow me to digress, my parents didn't bat an eyelash when I got my first Eminem CD... I don't know why. I mean let me really think about it for a moment. One time, I was younger by the way, after I just got Rob Zombie's "Hellbilly Deluxe" as a kid, I remember my father having this conversation with me.
Dad: "Do you really think you should be listening to this?"
Me: "It's just music..."
My father pretty much left it at that. My dad let me and my friend Billy listen to his Dennis Leary, No Cure For Cancer CD when we were like 13-14 "Don't let your mother know I let you listen to this." He said, hehehe. I'm glad he did let me listen to it and let me mention this is probably AFTER I got into Eminem... I mean I'm far from "messed up" but who is really normal these days right? My point is, my parents addressed the issue when it was apparent. I was what, probably 11-12, well before the time I was starting to actually listen to Eminem's music instead of pretending I was.
So The Marshall Marshall Mathers LP came out, and I had to have it, I bought it and I was listening to it. Honestly, I bought it myself, (as a kid, crazy I know) I was buying things for myself at that age though Mom would let me go to the mall as long as I wasn't going alone (and sometimes I could. I was a pretty independent teen) I would get video games on the occasions I had enough money or what have you. The world was a different place in the 90's... I mean kids might be able to buy CD's with graphic language on them but I don't now I'm not 13 anymore.
His lyrics were certainly extreme. Songs about killing the mother of his kid, songs about robbing banks, doing drugs, hell. I don't think that album really has one sorta mellow song... There's one of my personal favorites, Ammityville, which is a blood anthem for Detroit boasting it as Murder Capitol of America (it was again this year if I'm not mistaken...) so yes at this point Eminem was a real wealth of lyrical content
In Grade 8, I was doing homework at a classmate's house, he had Eminem's first "Slim Shady" CD, aka the one I hadn't heard yet. IT was even darker, I could see why he was such a big deal when he first burst onto the scene because some of his music was truly dark. However songs like Role Model and Just Don't Give A Fuck remain personal favorites to this day as well as many other songs from that album. His music wasn't changing me albeit, I was developing my apathy for public school at that age... that's another blog for another time.
Eminem started out as a grotesque beast... something blatant, in your face, something diabolical... it was this pure darkness that almost kind of looks like a metaphor for the late 90's as a whole with how popular violence, sex, etc was on television during that time, Eminem... at least not directly, was a part of something and he didn't know his music was going to grow and last beyond that... He was cashing in on his 15 minutes.
How was I to interpret his music, indeed I was one of the kids he was so often citing as to influencing in his music but I didn't feel like he was portrayed as to making someone my age feel, in fact it was quite the opposite. I always admired Eminem for his ability to just speak his mind and say what he wants. He has used his music to bash George Bush and the US Government, the Media, Parents and Parenting, he's called out other rappers, he's spoken about himself (maybe?) and sure he's written borderline fantasy raps about killing, drug abuse, rape, etc, because he wants to offend you. Anyone who cant see through the Slim Shady facade is the very person he's trying to offend. I've always appreciated and respected Eminem because of his attitude (warped as it may be) toward free speech, it affected me at a young age without even really realizing it and I am better for it today.
It's not like I would go around singing the Eminem lyrics... are you kidding me? I wanted to KEEP listening to it, the last thing I was going to do was let Mom catch me blasting Criminal casually in my bedroom at 14. I think there are metal bands that raise equal eyebrows but Eminem has a reputation, especially back then, the last thing I wanted was Mom taking that CD away. I laugh about it now but if she heard the songs she probably would have questioned me about Eminem at the very least.
Allow me to digress once more... One time I was walking to work (I'm about... 20-21 in this story so fast forward.) I'm walking down passed The Lodge Motel on my way to Boston Pizza, I'm singing Everything Ends by Slipknot about as loud as someone can sing a hate anthem like that. There's a guy on the second level having a smoke, he sees me as walk by singing/butchering the words of this song, I took a look, he was speechless. There was an amusement this gave me, the gratification was something I think is somewhat similar to the feeling Eminem gets out of pissing off the entire world with his lyrical content. That's just me taking a guess... I don't know him. I don't know if I could ever feel comfortable doing something like that, singing along with a Slipknot song that has some of the worst lyrics of any of their songs and proudly boast every word from my voice box... Not without having a little bit of Slim Shady in me, so to speak.
I'm sure Eminem hasn't just affected me. There are too few people that can really speak to my age group, I'm still relatively young, only 24, and I am sure lots of kids are blasting Slim Shady on their iPods behind their parents backs just like I did. How his music affects them is really not up to Eminem, it's up to the values that have been instilled upon the child from their parents and the kids ability to realize that he's just a rapper and the bottom line is he's there to enjoy... if it's wrong to take joy from something like Eminem than I don't want to be right!
This generation especially has too few people we can really look at and say "they are an embodiment of the freedom of speech I like to have." Everywhere you look, its celebrities, drug addicts, murders, bad, bad, bad, negative, negative, negative, there's never anything good in the news anymore unless it's a "recovery" story about some bullshit celebrity or nobody that isn't worth the airtime they're given, that's a different story....
Bottom line, it's people like Eminem that I respect for saying it how it is, for saying what they want to say the way they want to say it, and simply because we can. There are too few people in this world with the courage to do so.
There's a little Slim Shady in all of us... at least so I'm told... until next time.
PEACE.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
What are The Liberals smokin' ? (Another Political Rant)
I'm not inside my own mind today... I have to be... Liberals had to remind us they were Pro-Pot.
Why did we forget all of a sudden. if Jean Chrétien had his way, we would all be smoking big fatties right now. THEY JOKED ABOUT IT IN THE HOUSE FOR FUCK SAKES! OF course, American Oversight's, ahem, nipped that in the bud pretty quick.
Why would they go out of their way to remind us...
Well lets look at the facts here, facts are facts, I don't need bullshit statistics to sell this to you.
People smoke weed, a lot of people. People you know, people you didn't know do it. It's easy to say "majority" to exaggerate but when it comes to smoking marijuana, the people have spoken in the past and continue to keep tokin' in the privacy of their homes because, well, it's the most comfortable that way. It's not ridiculous for me to say that MOST Canadians would be in favor of legalizing Marijuana, it's a simple fact. A truth. Honest and pure.
Now The Liberals got crushed in the last election, CRUSHED... Like. The NDP Did REALLY good. They didn't win, despite the NDP doing really well, the Conservative Majority, when the dust settled, the Liberals were left gasping, breathing crudely into a 30 year old respirator while the Michael Ignatieff experiment failed thanks to maybe the most brilliant smear campaign in the history of Canadian Politics by the Conservatives.
Now, they're desperate. The Liberals have never been the third wheel in the Canadian political spectrum. The announcement of the liberals being pro-pot, especially at this point and time is essentially meaningless. It's like giving someone with the stomach flu cough medicine... What exactly are your words going to change? The Liberals have no weight to throw around in the House right now, all the Liberals are trying to do at this point and time is sway voters...
WHY?
WHY WASTE YOUR FUCKING EFFORT LIKE THAT?!
Unless you REMIND Canada of your feelings for the wacky tobbacky during the prime period of election, people aren't going to care. I'm not much for flow charts or funny pictures to make my points for me, so lets play the hypothetical scenario game.
In the 2011 Election, approximately 61% of Canadians voted. Of that 61%, only 18.9% of those people voted Liberal... so
61% of Canada, approximately, is 34,278,400 (as of January 1st, 2011 according to Statistics Canada) so that means of that 34,278,400 people... A solid 20 million or so voted leaving a decent 10 million Canadians looking like lazy assholes. OF those 20 million people that voted, not even 20% could muster the confidence to vote Liberal, I blame the Conservative smear campaign. It's a double whammy for both, the liberal decline AND the NDP Surge (you can also give Jack Layton considerable credit for that as well) SO for the 18.9% of people that voted Liberal, that means about 4 million Canadians voted Liberal. This is not a small number by any means, but with two parties getting 70% of the vote, the Liberals were due to be lost in territory they don't know, much less understand: The wasteland of Canadian Politics with the Green Party and the Bloc...
SO.... lets look at the numbers a little further. Compared to the 2008 Election, there was a decline in votes of 7.3% approximately in regard to the percentage of the vote the Liberals had, now that 7.3 percent drop accounted for over 40 seats in the House of Commons and almost 5 million votes. A brilliant attack on Ignatieff left the wind out of the Liberals sails and while Layton was launching a spirited campaign for Prime Minister the Liberal Party might as well flushed themselves down the toilet.
That brings me back to the original point... WHY REMIND Canadians that you're pro-pot? Because the Liberals need to make some NOISE... ANY kind of noise will do for them, those 5 million votes made a HUGE difference.
Compare and contrast with the NDP who saw a vote increase of roughly 4 million voters from 2008 to 2011. Those 4 million voters helped the NDP get an additional 66 seats in the house of commons. Many of those new seats were acquired from Liberal territories.
I'm not going to bother with the Conservatives, all that matters is despite getting LESS THAN 40% of the total vote, they have MAJORITY government. That doesn't make any fucking sense no matter how you look at it.
BACK to the Liberals and their dirty pot smoking ways, and why it's important...
The NDP didn't out and brag it, but their rather more relaxed attitude toward small crime such as marijuana and priorities on the health system and education really won over a lot of voters (these things are staple of most Liberal platforms (among other business related things of course) but people didn't care what the Liberals were trying to do.. What were the Liberals trying to do? Nobody knew, and nobody gave a shit because the TV told them they weren't to trust Ignatieff and that ate that shit up like a five dollar Chinese Lunch smorg.
The NDP offered a more appealing body to vote for, and then the conservatives basically got by on name alone (Oh that and pressure power-plays from Big Oil, that's right...) because a large body of Canadian voters hear "Conservative" and just seem to sub-consciously check the box for whatever reason. I will NOT turn this into another Harper HateStock... fuck it, you tell me Big Oil didn't buy this last election and I will say prove me wrong. This left the Liberals gasping for air in the end and the results show it.
A party who, I think still doesn't have a leader. (A quick fact check tells me: Bob Rae is apparent party leader...) Okay so Bob Rae looks like Ric Flair with the chin of a hockey player but what does he stand for. I know nothing of the guy, haven't heard him say a speech and well I don't go Liberal so what does it matter.
HERE is where it matters. IF the Liberals REALLY embraced their sudden fondness for being pro-pot. They would win Canada. Period. IF they came up with an actual platform to legalize it, use the money revenue for Canada's benefit and they have another 3 fucking years to come up with something so STEP YOUR SHIT UP LIBERALS. IF you WANT Canada, it's right there waiting for you to take it. You just have to show some cajones like ol' Jean did embrace an ideal that could help you win an election.
If they just tack it on for notoriety, they're going to sway, maybe a million votes max. Nothing changes, we stay pro-conservative because there's too many people in the older generations who are confused by the new conservatives and what they represent.
You see, there used to be TWO conservative parties in Canada. Red and Blue. I cant make this shit up! They merged and Stephen Harper became the party leader (the leader of the other Con's was, Peter Mackay, our Minister of Defense. Don't even get me started on him. He's as fucking slimy as Harper and he's done more than enough this last year to prove it. He took his position in government, let Harper take control of the party, maybe it was for the best that way because Peter Mackay is not PM material. EVEN if the entire fucking county here has their head up his ass. He's just as robotic and two-faced as Harper ANYWAY....)
Despite both being branded with the Conservative name, these two parties did exemplify different ideals. You can see why the initial merger was so rocky (and why we had minority government for half a decade) people don't know what Conservatives they are voting for, they just know what they know. They voted Conservative in the past (unless you think about LYING BRIAN MULRONEY.) but ohhh the Liberals have done so much to fuck Canada up, never mind what Mulroney did in his time in office. This older generation votes Conservatives, they're not voting for PC's like Brian Mulroney (the Blue Con's) they are probably thinking Red con's (or Tory's as they were called in those days)
Basically, these conservative voters who have voted conservative simply on the merits of the Tory's, are voting for a party that is basically strictly PC-ideology. It's not what THEY were voting for those years ago but its what they continue to vote for now because of the conservative name.
That's another problem for the Liberals. Embracing marijuana as a PLATFORM to use, not just a token decriminalization and maybe promotion of use in a medicinal capacity since many Canadian doctors seem to shun the idea of medicinal marijuana. (Much like the STATES...) so a Liberal platform to facilitate that for patients that could actually use it would be great for Canadians who could use it. That would encourage voters. Showing that you, the Liberal party, have thought about a LEGITIMATE way to use marijuana to HELP Canada and make money for Canada, then the voters will respond to that. IF you are just using the hype of being 'pro-pot' to get some extra votes, you're going to find yourself at the bottom of the barrel again.
Why did we forget all of a sudden. if Jean Chrétien had his way, we would all be smoking big fatties right now. THEY JOKED ABOUT IT IN THE HOUSE FOR FUCK SAKES! OF course, American Oversight's, ahem, nipped that in the bud pretty quick.
Why would they go out of their way to remind us...
Well lets look at the facts here, facts are facts, I don't need bullshit statistics to sell this to you.
People smoke weed, a lot of people. People you know, people you didn't know do it. It's easy to say "majority" to exaggerate but when it comes to smoking marijuana, the people have spoken in the past and continue to keep tokin' in the privacy of their homes because, well, it's the most comfortable that way. It's not ridiculous for me to say that MOST Canadians would be in favor of legalizing Marijuana, it's a simple fact. A truth. Honest and pure.
Now The Liberals got crushed in the last election, CRUSHED... Like. The NDP Did REALLY good. They didn't win, despite the NDP doing really well, the Conservative Majority, when the dust settled, the Liberals were left gasping, breathing crudely into a 30 year old respirator while the Michael Ignatieff experiment failed thanks to maybe the most brilliant smear campaign in the history of Canadian Politics by the Conservatives.
Now, they're desperate. The Liberals have never been the third wheel in the Canadian political spectrum. The announcement of the liberals being pro-pot, especially at this point and time is essentially meaningless. It's like giving someone with the stomach flu cough medicine... What exactly are your words going to change? The Liberals have no weight to throw around in the House right now, all the Liberals are trying to do at this point and time is sway voters...
WHY?
WHY WASTE YOUR FUCKING EFFORT LIKE THAT?!
Unless you REMIND Canada of your feelings for the wacky tobbacky during the prime period of election, people aren't going to care. I'm not much for flow charts or funny pictures to make my points for me, so lets play the hypothetical scenario game.
In the 2011 Election, approximately 61% of Canadians voted. Of that 61%, only 18.9% of those people voted Liberal... so
61% of Canada, approximately, is 34,278,400 (as of January 1st, 2011 according to Statistics Canada) so that means of that 34,278,400 people... A solid 20 million or so voted leaving a decent 10 million Canadians looking like lazy assholes. OF those 20 million people that voted, not even 20% could muster the confidence to vote Liberal, I blame the Conservative smear campaign. It's a double whammy for both, the liberal decline AND the NDP Surge (you can also give Jack Layton considerable credit for that as well) SO for the 18.9% of people that voted Liberal, that means about 4 million Canadians voted Liberal. This is not a small number by any means, but with two parties getting 70% of the vote, the Liberals were due to be lost in territory they don't know, much less understand: The wasteland of Canadian Politics with the Green Party and the Bloc...
SO.... lets look at the numbers a little further. Compared to the 2008 Election, there was a decline in votes of 7.3% approximately in regard to the percentage of the vote the Liberals had, now that 7.3 percent drop accounted for over 40 seats in the House of Commons and almost 5 million votes. A brilliant attack on Ignatieff left the wind out of the Liberals sails and while Layton was launching a spirited campaign for Prime Minister the Liberal Party might as well flushed themselves down the toilet.
That brings me back to the original point... WHY REMIND Canadians that you're pro-pot? Because the Liberals need to make some NOISE... ANY kind of noise will do for them, those 5 million votes made a HUGE difference.
Compare and contrast with the NDP who saw a vote increase of roughly 4 million voters from 2008 to 2011. Those 4 million voters helped the NDP get an additional 66 seats in the house of commons. Many of those new seats were acquired from Liberal territories.
I'm not going to bother with the Conservatives, all that matters is despite getting LESS THAN 40% of the total vote, they have MAJORITY government. That doesn't make any fucking sense no matter how you look at it.
BACK to the Liberals and their dirty pot smoking ways, and why it's important...
The NDP didn't out and brag it, but their rather more relaxed attitude toward small crime such as marijuana and priorities on the health system and education really won over a lot of voters (these things are staple of most Liberal platforms (among other business related things of course) but people didn't care what the Liberals were trying to do.. What were the Liberals trying to do? Nobody knew, and nobody gave a shit because the TV told them they weren't to trust Ignatieff and that ate that shit up like a five dollar Chinese Lunch smorg.
The NDP offered a more appealing body to vote for, and then the conservatives basically got by on name alone (Oh that and pressure power-plays from Big Oil, that's right...) because a large body of Canadian voters hear "Conservative" and just seem to sub-consciously check the box for whatever reason. I will NOT turn this into another Harper HateStock... fuck it, you tell me Big Oil didn't buy this last election and I will say prove me wrong. This left the Liberals gasping for air in the end and the results show it.
A party who, I think still doesn't have a leader. (A quick fact check tells me: Bob Rae is apparent party leader...) Okay so Bob Rae looks like Ric Flair with the chin of a hockey player but what does he stand for. I know nothing of the guy, haven't heard him say a speech and well I don't go Liberal so what does it matter.
HERE is where it matters. IF the Liberals REALLY embraced their sudden fondness for being pro-pot. They would win Canada. Period. IF they came up with an actual platform to legalize it, use the money revenue for Canada's benefit and they have another 3 fucking years to come up with something so STEP YOUR SHIT UP LIBERALS. IF you WANT Canada, it's right there waiting for you to take it. You just have to show some cajones like ol' Jean did embrace an ideal that could help you win an election.
If they just tack it on for notoriety, they're going to sway, maybe a million votes max. Nothing changes, we stay pro-conservative because there's too many people in the older generations who are confused by the new conservatives and what they represent.
You see, there used to be TWO conservative parties in Canada. Red and Blue. I cant make this shit up! They merged and Stephen Harper became the party leader (the leader of the other Con's was, Peter Mackay, our Minister of Defense. Don't even get me started on him. He's as fucking slimy as Harper and he's done more than enough this last year to prove it. He took his position in government, let Harper take control of the party, maybe it was for the best that way because Peter Mackay is not PM material. EVEN if the entire fucking county here has their head up his ass. He's just as robotic and two-faced as Harper ANYWAY....)
Despite both being branded with the Conservative name, these two parties did exemplify different ideals. You can see why the initial merger was so rocky (and why we had minority government for half a decade) people don't know what Conservatives they are voting for, they just know what they know. They voted Conservative in the past (unless you think about LYING BRIAN MULRONEY.) but ohhh the Liberals have done so much to fuck Canada up, never mind what Mulroney did in his time in office. This older generation votes Conservatives, they're not voting for PC's like Brian Mulroney (the Blue Con's) they are probably thinking Red con's (or Tory's as they were called in those days)
Basically, these conservative voters who have voted conservative simply on the merits of the Tory's, are voting for a party that is basically strictly PC-ideology. It's not what THEY were voting for those years ago but its what they continue to vote for now because of the conservative name.
That's another problem for the Liberals. Embracing marijuana as a PLATFORM to use, not just a token decriminalization and maybe promotion of use in a medicinal capacity since many Canadian doctors seem to shun the idea of medicinal marijuana. (Much like the STATES...) so a Liberal platform to facilitate that for patients that could actually use it would be great for Canadians who could use it. That would encourage voters. Showing that you, the Liberal party, have thought about a LEGITIMATE way to use marijuana to HELP Canada and make money for Canada, then the voters will respond to that. IF you are just using the hype of being 'pro-pot' to get some extra votes, you're going to find yourself at the bottom of the barrel again.
Fear Factor
I'm not inside my own mind today... why is everyone so fucking afraid in this country?
Afraid to walk the streets at night
Afraid to leave their doors unlocked
Afraid to let their children play in the yard unattended
Afraid to confront people
Afraid of pretty much anything you can put to mind. It doesn't make any sense. The thing that boggles my mind isn't really how much people tell me they're afraid but how much media tells me I'm afraid. The News tells me to be fearful, Newspapers write horror stories while, Radio plays this up as well by keeping the people up to date on the latest tragedy. Nobody really seems to question it, lots of people read the newspaper and watch the news and they don't even seem to realize how afraid they really are.
Everyone is afraid, it's a culture of fear that's been created in less than my cognitive 'adult-ish' years so lets say a good decade at least.
The biggest telling tale is current events of my small town. A young girl/woman (19 I believe) was abducted and later (over a month) found murdered. People rallied together to find this girl, you couldn't pass a block of street without seeing her missing persons poster. The hope everyone shared that she could be alive was a real uniting energy the likes of which I have RARELY seen... The town set up this corner of the road where I believe her shoe was found as a kind of memorial. Candles and such all along the side walk. It was kind of cool to see such a sporadic commemoration of good will. Pretty much a couple months passed from the day she went misising before the people were given any kind of answers and even then, knowing what we know. We know this:
- She was murdered. (Around the same time another person was brutally murdered in front of his fucking family, disgusting act. I believe this to be mere coincidence, there are those who do not. That is all I will say on this. Believe what the fuck you want on the matter.)
- She was abducted off the side of the road. She lost a shoe, and it wasn't akin to Cinderella.
- She didn't have her phone because some assshole Cab Driver wouldn't wait for her and her friends as they went to the bar that night.
- She was found, pretty far off from where she was supposedly taken. On farmland, I'm not sure WHERE exactly it is because the knowledge I have of the local area is shit. It was out of town though, that I am sure.
- Her boyfriend was supposed to pick her up at Big Al's, a convenience store quite a ways away from the bar, Doolys, she was at, why couldn't her BF have just picked her up at the bar? THIS was a point of much finger pointing at the boyfriend for some time though I believe he's innocent of the matter, again, lots of chitter chatter of people wanting to believe otherwise.
That's another thing I want to digress on, people LOVE to theorize with open books like this. Holy shit everyone had their two fucking cents about what happened to this poor girl and who did it. ITS STILL LIKE THAT for a lot of people but the hysteria has really died down since she was found and that's something at least...
It scares me how eager people are to play the blame game and make causal accusations based off of pure thought. No basis what so ever other than what they've been told by and read in the media. We all know the Media is such a trustworthy fountain of knowledge so why question it. I think it's a big reason for the fucking coma Canadians seem to be in right now, again, another rant for another time...
Moving along... still, nothing has been really proven to the people. I will not dive into the theories I've heard, aside from the brief tidbits I've touched upon (personally intriguing IDEAS to me.) In a small town you have to believe what you feel and I have the sense there is a lot of bullshit to the whole situation and when you let your mind wander with possibilities, something menial can become sensational and something horrific could become extraordinary in a sense.
What followed after her death was something that disgusted me entirely. The way the local newspaper in particular pushed the story and did so for nearly a week after her being found in farm land decomposed made people crazy. They were scared to walk the streets day or night, there was this whole kind of global maternal instinct to protect young women who looked vulnrible. Not for me, that's ANOTHER rant... but just the general consensus of people adopted this attitude "Oh, you shouldn't be out there by yourself." "You gotta be real careful these days, you don't know who to trust."
That's a doozie right there... "You don't know who to trust."
What the fuck is that. YES YOU DO. YOU FUCKING KNOW what you KNOW.
For fuck sakes, OPEN your eyes and look at the world for what it is and right then you will know what you can fucking trust in this world. Some of the people you KNOW are the only people you can trust in this world. That's why I hate that saying... It makes me so mad when people casually toss that one around like any one of us is a goddamn psycho.
I am so sick and tired of people and the media telling me who I have to fucking trust. I am an adult, I see the world for what it really is and I can trust what I want to trust and DO trust what I want to trust, you can keep your fucking opinion to yourself asshole.
Why does it seem like crime rates are actually down (one of the HUGE arguments against Harper's Megacrime bill) yet all they tell us about is how fucking dangerous the world is. Its not safe anymore despite what the numbers state. It's this meticulous fear factor that they have really been working on in the last decade. You cant talk about walking home at night without someone telling you about how dangerous it is.
Why is that?
Its everywhere, every single one of us is constantly being told that we're not safe, we're not to trust anyone and we're not to feel secure and it's gotten to the point that it's borderline hysteria with our belief. It's complete subconsciousness, a lot of the time people don't even realize they do it. It's kind of scary. There's no real logic to it and there's no critical thinking against it. People don't really even seem to realize it and they just accept that they are scared and they don't really know why.
I don't know if it's this generation of 'depressed' people being given pills that make them docile and complacent with their oh so horrible lives of having a home and wonderful technology and making money instead of like the third world where GENOCIDE is a casual worry in some people's daily activities. Get over your fucking self... okay I am getting distracted again but I don't know if its this docile society, accepting and believing everything THEY ARE TOLD and not chosing to really think about things for themselves.
Maybe things really are worse, maybe I should be afraid, but fuck you. I will not be afraid because you, the television, newspapers or radio told me to be afraid. I will be afraid because I know the world is capable out there and I will be afraid of the things that are actually happening that people don't give a shit about.
Bills and Laws their governments are passing without a thought because of ignorant, complacent zombies. Fearful zombies that will come together whenever they are displeased about cell phone service but when it comes to their fucking standard of living and their civil liberties (liberties is the most apropriate word, because you can take a liberty away from someone. Rights sound too permanent and I don't believe we have rights anymore in this world)
Let the suits decide, fuck what I think right?
Afraid to walk the streets at night
Afraid to leave their doors unlocked
Afraid to let their children play in the yard unattended
Afraid to confront people
Afraid of pretty much anything you can put to mind. It doesn't make any sense. The thing that boggles my mind isn't really how much people tell me they're afraid but how much media tells me I'm afraid. The News tells me to be fearful, Newspapers write horror stories while, Radio plays this up as well by keeping the people up to date on the latest tragedy. Nobody really seems to question it, lots of people read the newspaper and watch the news and they don't even seem to realize how afraid they really are.
Everyone is afraid, it's a culture of fear that's been created in less than my cognitive 'adult-ish' years so lets say a good decade at least.
The biggest telling tale is current events of my small town. A young girl/woman (19 I believe) was abducted and later (over a month) found murdered. People rallied together to find this girl, you couldn't pass a block of street without seeing her missing persons poster. The hope everyone shared that she could be alive was a real uniting energy the likes of which I have RARELY seen... The town set up this corner of the road where I believe her shoe was found as a kind of memorial. Candles and such all along the side walk. It was kind of cool to see such a sporadic commemoration of good will. Pretty much a couple months passed from the day she went misising before the people were given any kind of answers and even then, knowing what we know. We know this:
- She was murdered. (Around the same time another person was brutally murdered in front of his fucking family, disgusting act. I believe this to be mere coincidence, there are those who do not. That is all I will say on this. Believe what the fuck you want on the matter.)
- She was abducted off the side of the road. She lost a shoe, and it wasn't akin to Cinderella.
- She didn't have her phone because some assshole Cab Driver wouldn't wait for her and her friends as they went to the bar that night.
- She was found, pretty far off from where she was supposedly taken. On farmland, I'm not sure WHERE exactly it is because the knowledge I have of the local area is shit. It was out of town though, that I am sure.
- Her boyfriend was supposed to pick her up at Big Al's, a convenience store quite a ways away from the bar, Doolys, she was at, why couldn't her BF have just picked her up at the bar? THIS was a point of much finger pointing at the boyfriend for some time though I believe he's innocent of the matter, again, lots of chitter chatter of people wanting to believe otherwise.
That's another thing I want to digress on, people LOVE to theorize with open books like this. Holy shit everyone had their two fucking cents about what happened to this poor girl and who did it. ITS STILL LIKE THAT for a lot of people but the hysteria has really died down since she was found and that's something at least...
It scares me how eager people are to play the blame game and make causal accusations based off of pure thought. No basis what so ever other than what they've been told by and read in the media. We all know the Media is such a trustworthy fountain of knowledge so why question it. I think it's a big reason for the fucking coma Canadians seem to be in right now, again, another rant for another time...
Moving along... still, nothing has been really proven to the people. I will not dive into the theories I've heard, aside from the brief tidbits I've touched upon (personally intriguing IDEAS to me.) In a small town you have to believe what you feel and I have the sense there is a lot of bullshit to the whole situation and when you let your mind wander with possibilities, something menial can become sensational and something horrific could become extraordinary in a sense.
What followed after her death was something that disgusted me entirely. The way the local newspaper in particular pushed the story and did so for nearly a week after her being found in farm land decomposed made people crazy. They were scared to walk the streets day or night, there was this whole kind of global maternal instinct to protect young women who looked vulnrible. Not for me, that's ANOTHER rant... but just the general consensus of people adopted this attitude "Oh, you shouldn't be out there by yourself." "You gotta be real careful these days, you don't know who to trust."
That's a doozie right there... "You don't know who to trust."
What the fuck is that. YES YOU DO. YOU FUCKING KNOW what you KNOW.
For fuck sakes, OPEN your eyes and look at the world for what it is and right then you will know what you can fucking trust in this world. Some of the people you KNOW are the only people you can trust in this world. That's why I hate that saying... It makes me so mad when people casually toss that one around like any one of us is a goddamn psycho.
I am so sick and tired of people and the media telling me who I have to fucking trust. I am an adult, I see the world for what it really is and I can trust what I want to trust and DO trust what I want to trust, you can keep your fucking opinion to yourself asshole.
Why does it seem like crime rates are actually down (one of the HUGE arguments against Harper's Megacrime bill) yet all they tell us about is how fucking dangerous the world is. Its not safe anymore despite what the numbers state. It's this meticulous fear factor that they have really been working on in the last decade. You cant talk about walking home at night without someone telling you about how dangerous it is.
Why is that?
Its everywhere, every single one of us is constantly being told that we're not safe, we're not to trust anyone and we're not to feel secure and it's gotten to the point that it's borderline hysteria with our belief. It's complete subconsciousness, a lot of the time people don't even realize they do it. It's kind of scary. There's no real logic to it and there's no critical thinking against it. People don't really even seem to realize it and they just accept that they are scared and they don't really know why.
I don't know if it's this generation of 'depressed' people being given pills that make them docile and complacent with their oh so horrible lives of having a home and wonderful technology and making money instead of like the third world where GENOCIDE is a casual worry in some people's daily activities. Get over your fucking self... okay I am getting distracted again but I don't know if its this docile society, accepting and believing everything THEY ARE TOLD and not chosing to really think about things for themselves.
Maybe things really are worse, maybe I should be afraid, but fuck you. I will not be afraid because you, the television, newspapers or radio told me to be afraid. I will be afraid because I know the world is capable out there and I will be afraid of the things that are actually happening that people don't give a shit about.
Bills and Laws their governments are passing without a thought because of ignorant, complacent zombies. Fearful zombies that will come together whenever they are displeased about cell phone service but when it comes to their fucking standard of living and their civil liberties (liberties is the most apropriate word, because you can take a liberty away from someone. Rights sound too permanent and I don't believe we have rights anymore in this world)
Let the suits decide, fuck what I think right?
Thursday, January 5, 2012
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I'm not inside my own mind today... its before 7am. I do not enjoy this time of day, it's very vampire. That and I need coffee.
Happy New Year!
It's 2012, resolutions abound, I'm looking forward to leaving 2011 behind. It's just the way it is. I'm not exactly one to mull about in the past.
I don't have any specific thing to talk about so I'm just going to shoot from the hip here.
Lets start with SOPA: It's kind of a big deal .
Honestly, it was only a matter of time before the suits took an aggressive front against internet piracy. What did you honestly expect was going to happen? The record companies, film / tv producers, game developers, etc, etc, by people's sticky digital fingers. They need to push the bill through before the election, obviously. I wonder how hard the people are really going to try and fight this after the whole Occupy movement has lost a lot of steam?
We live in a world where there is the capability to do this. People can afford the monthly bill to get the internet but they cant afford the cost of a CD, DVD, Video Game, Computer Software, etc, etc, so many things can be pirated these days. It's not as bad (at least I don't think it is) as the Napster days when downloading music was this bizarre taboo. The allure of the cost (none) plus the anonymity of the internet is a cocktail of disaster. It was (and still is) only a matter of time before the powers that be put the clamps down on the internet.
I read a quote somewhere, it said - "The wild west days of the internet are coming to an end." I agree.
There have been arguments that SOPA will change nothing, maybe this is also true. SOPA is just the beginning though. Once those suits (aka, whoever's in charge. I don't think SOPA's as big a priority for Obama as some other things, at least I would hope it fucking isnt... depends who'se voices are wispering in his ears. Okay I sound like a weirdo hah!) take the time to put something together it will get passed and the internet will change.
WHEN that happens? I don't know. SOPA isn't it, but it's the start.
Okay onto something else, Happy New Year!
Yeah I already said that but with 2012 brings new things. The end of things to some of us crazy enough to believe it. The entire notion the world is going to end is ridiculous to me. Remember the doom preached on Y2K. People legitimately lost their shit, fearing what they would do when their precious technology was rendered useless at the stroke of midnight?! Give me a fucking break!
Oh yeah, it's the MAYANS... for fuck sakes!
Okay... so other than that. There's things to look forward to!
The Dark Knight Rises, Mass Effect 3. Okay I love Movies and Video Games but the fact remains that those are just the little things. I'm not going to rant and rave about life. Having a new job just makes everything better and Christmas was perfect so that is the best way to turn the corner into a new year. Maybe Diablo 3 will come out sometime in July that way I can put a few months into it before the world ends?
The sun is starting to come up. I need coffee... maybe breakfast. Until next time,
PEACE!
Happy New Year!
It's 2012, resolutions abound, I'm looking forward to leaving 2011 behind. It's just the way it is. I'm not exactly one to mull about in the past.
I don't have any specific thing to talk about so I'm just going to shoot from the hip here.
Lets start with SOPA: It's kind of a big deal .
Honestly, it was only a matter of time before the suits took an aggressive front against internet piracy. What did you honestly expect was going to happen? The record companies, film / tv producers, game developers, etc, etc, by people's sticky digital fingers. They need to push the bill through before the election, obviously. I wonder how hard the people are really going to try and fight this after the whole Occupy movement has lost a lot of steam?
We live in a world where there is the capability to do this. People can afford the monthly bill to get the internet but they cant afford the cost of a CD, DVD, Video Game, Computer Software, etc, etc, so many things can be pirated these days. It's not as bad (at least I don't think it is) as the Napster days when downloading music was this bizarre taboo. The allure of the cost (none) plus the anonymity of the internet is a cocktail of disaster. It was (and still is) only a matter of time before the powers that be put the clamps down on the internet.
I read a quote somewhere, it said - "The wild west days of the internet are coming to an end." I agree.
There have been arguments that SOPA will change nothing, maybe this is also true. SOPA is just the beginning though. Once those suits (aka, whoever's in charge. I don't think SOPA's as big a priority for Obama as some other things, at least I would hope it fucking isnt... depends who'se voices are wispering in his ears. Okay I sound like a weirdo hah!) take the time to put something together it will get passed and the internet will change.
WHEN that happens? I don't know. SOPA isn't it, but it's the start.
Okay onto something else, Happy New Year!
Yeah I already said that but with 2012 brings new things. The end of things to some of us crazy enough to believe it. The entire notion the world is going to end is ridiculous to me. Remember the doom preached on Y2K. People legitimately lost their shit, fearing what they would do when their precious technology was rendered useless at the stroke of midnight?! Give me a fucking break!
Oh yeah, it's the MAYANS... for fuck sakes!
Okay... so other than that. There's things to look forward to!
The Dark Knight Rises, Mass Effect 3. Okay I love Movies and Video Games but the fact remains that those are just the little things. I'm not going to rant and rave about life. Having a new job just makes everything better and Christmas was perfect so that is the best way to turn the corner into a new year. Maybe Diablo 3 will come out sometime in July that way I can put a few months into it before the world ends?
The sun is starting to come up. I need coffee... maybe breakfast. Until next time,
PEACE!
Sunday, November 6, 2011
NEW! Part Two: Vidyea Gamez!
I'm not inside my own mind today... VIDEO GAMES!
Yeaaah, I've been playing my fair share of Xbox games lately. Certain individuals in my life would even claim that I was "xbox hogging" whatever this audacious term means, I'm not privy to it and I do not respond to it Yes, there have been a lot of new games that have come out, and I've been playing them! So I'll touch base on the games I've been playing and my thoughts on each game.
First and foremost; BATMAN ARKHAM CITY
OH MY GOD!
My inner 5 year old explodes when I even THINK about this game.
It's a masterpiece, and I'm not exaggerating. This is one of the best video games I've ever played and it's earned a spot in my all-time favorites hall of fame. It's probably hands-down, the best superhero video game ever made and it's story mode alone runs at the 10-15 hour mark which is easily two times larger than most video games that are released today. With the side-quests that bumps it up to over 40 hours. There's so much to do and if you cant' do it all?
Once you beat the game, you unlock the "plus" mode. You can play it again, keep your upgrades and the game is more difficult, but all the side-quests and riddler challenges you've completed to this point carry over so you can continue with your plus play through. When I beat the game the first time, I was just over 40% complete, and then my save file corrupted so I had to start over. It's okay with me, I'm taking the time to try and do more extras so that when I have beaten the game maybe I'm over half-complete.
The ironic thing, to me, is that Arkham City isn't just a great Batman game, it's also a great Spider-Man game.
What?
Yeah that's right, I said Spider-Man game. The Catwoman missions are a great vacation, (so to speak) from the Batman portions. Catwoman has her own distinct play style and she has "theif vision" which is similar to the detective vision that Batman has but its not nearly as comprehensive. Her combat is very acrobatic and she can climb up walls, and use her whip to jump from building to building. She's a spidey-sense, and web shooters shy of being BETTER at being Spider-Man, than Spider-Man!
Activision should take note! Pumping out a new, mediocre game every 12-15 months isn't going to help your cause, take the time to build a PROPER Spider-Man game, the one fans have wanted since the Spider-Man 3 debacle and then you will see them come.
That's what Rocksteady has done with Arkham City. They took the time to build a proper sequel, rather than pumping one out ASAP to cash in on the success of Arkham Asylum, they decided to improve upon Arkham Asylum in virtually every single way. The ways of which Asylum outshines its successor City are minimal, and you have to comb the game to find them.
Overall, Arkham City is a triumph, any Batman fan would lose their shit playing this game and for casual gamers who aren't hooked on pointy eared superheroes, this game is too fun to not enjoy it. Worth your time to check it out, TRUST me.
Then we've also got MADDEN NFL 12
I wrote about the Madden Conundrum a few months ago. However, Madden 12 is the real deal. They've overhauled the game in aspects of the game that haven't so much as been looked at by developers in FIVE YEARS like parts of the Franchise mode, such as post-season activities.
Gameplay itself has been overhauled, Madden 12 plays a lot smoother than Madden 11 and the hits are that much more dynamic. You will find yourself wincing at some of the on field contact, that's a service not only to the great details made on the animation but also the audio as well does a great job of capturing that dynamic aspect of Football.
As you would come to expect from any EA Sports title, presentation is top notch. A step up from Madden 11, the team specific introductions are a great touch that seems much more monumental in a game like Madden where there are only 32 teams than compared to the NCAA Football game that has over double that. Prestentation and gameplay aren't the only aspects Madden has improved though.
The game is much more complete than games past, almost every single game mode has received some due attention. Online Play is much more convenient now with the way they've set up their LIVE mode. The Ultimate Team mode is improved, though it's still as erroneous a game mode as it ever was. Be A Superstar mode has been upgraded as well though the bulk of my time is spent playing the Franchise mode there are a lot of other avenues for Madden to take up your time.
Madden 12 is THE most complete Madden that's been produced to date, current generation, or even last gen as well. As we draw closer to the next stage of gaming (the next-next gen) I expect EA Sports to stifle the progression of their titles and take their time (3-4 years) figuring out how to get the most out of the next generation. For now, Madden 12 is a success and although the Curse has hit Peyton Hillis and the Browns hard this year, I won't hold it against the video game!
Part 3 is going to be a movies post but that may have to wait until a later time. We'll see!
Yeaaah, I've been playing my fair share of Xbox games lately. Certain individuals in my life would even claim that I was "xbox hogging" whatever this audacious term means, I'm not privy to it and I do not respond to it Yes, there have been a lot of new games that have come out, and I've been playing them! So I'll touch base on the games I've been playing and my thoughts on each game.
First and foremost; BATMAN ARKHAM CITY
OH MY GOD!
My inner 5 year old explodes when I even THINK about this game.
It's a masterpiece, and I'm not exaggerating. This is one of the best video games I've ever played and it's earned a spot in my all-time favorites hall of fame. It's probably hands-down, the best superhero video game ever made and it's story mode alone runs at the 10-15 hour mark which is easily two times larger than most video games that are released today. With the side-quests that bumps it up to over 40 hours. There's so much to do and if you cant' do it all?
Once you beat the game, you unlock the "plus" mode. You can play it again, keep your upgrades and the game is more difficult, but all the side-quests and riddler challenges you've completed to this point carry over so you can continue with your plus play through. When I beat the game the first time, I was just over 40% complete, and then my save file corrupted so I had to start over. It's okay with me, I'm taking the time to try and do more extras so that when I have beaten the game maybe I'm over half-complete.
The ironic thing, to me, is that Arkham City isn't just a great Batman game, it's also a great Spider-Man game.
What?
Yeah that's right, I said Spider-Man game. The Catwoman missions are a great vacation, (so to speak) from the Batman portions. Catwoman has her own distinct play style and she has "theif vision" which is similar to the detective vision that Batman has but its not nearly as comprehensive. Her combat is very acrobatic and she can climb up walls, and use her whip to jump from building to building. She's a spidey-sense, and web shooters shy of being BETTER at being Spider-Man, than Spider-Man!
Activision should take note! Pumping out a new, mediocre game every 12-15 months isn't going to help your cause, take the time to build a PROPER Spider-Man game, the one fans have wanted since the Spider-Man 3 debacle and then you will see them come.
That's what Rocksteady has done with Arkham City. They took the time to build a proper sequel, rather than pumping one out ASAP to cash in on the success of Arkham Asylum, they decided to improve upon Arkham Asylum in virtually every single way. The ways of which Asylum outshines its successor City are minimal, and you have to comb the game to find them.
Overall, Arkham City is a triumph, any Batman fan would lose their shit playing this game and for casual gamers who aren't hooked on pointy eared superheroes, this game is too fun to not enjoy it. Worth your time to check it out, TRUST me.
Then we've also got MADDEN NFL 12
I wrote about the Madden Conundrum a few months ago. However, Madden 12 is the real deal. They've overhauled the game in aspects of the game that haven't so much as been looked at by developers in FIVE YEARS like parts of the Franchise mode, such as post-season activities.
Gameplay itself has been overhauled, Madden 12 plays a lot smoother than Madden 11 and the hits are that much more dynamic. You will find yourself wincing at some of the on field contact, that's a service not only to the great details made on the animation but also the audio as well does a great job of capturing that dynamic aspect of Football.
As you would come to expect from any EA Sports title, presentation is top notch. A step up from Madden 11, the team specific introductions are a great touch that seems much more monumental in a game like Madden where there are only 32 teams than compared to the NCAA Football game that has over double that. Prestentation and gameplay aren't the only aspects Madden has improved though.
The game is much more complete than games past, almost every single game mode has received some due attention. Online Play is much more convenient now with the way they've set up their LIVE mode. The Ultimate Team mode is improved, though it's still as erroneous a game mode as it ever was. Be A Superstar mode has been upgraded as well though the bulk of my time is spent playing the Franchise mode there are a lot of other avenues for Madden to take up your time.
Madden 12 is THE most complete Madden that's been produced to date, current generation, or even last gen as well. As we draw closer to the next stage of gaming (the next-next gen) I expect EA Sports to stifle the progression of their titles and take their time (3-4 years) figuring out how to get the most out of the next generation. For now, Madden 12 is a success and although the Curse has hit Peyton Hillis and the Browns hard this year, I won't hold it against the video game!
Part 3 is going to be a movies post but that may have to wait until a later time. We'll see!
New! Part One: Bye Bye to The Verge...
I'm not inside my own mind today... It's been a while so lets get caught up! PLENTY To talk about ... I'll probably span this into a couple of entries. We'll see. ANYWAY:
Where to begin, let's start off with I GOT A NEW JOB!!!
Yes, I got my get out of jail free card.
There was a new pizza place that opened up over a month ago now. On a whim, I figured I would try it because I love pizza more than anything. I ask the woman, (who coincidentally also used to work at The Verge (( I will call it "the verge" to avoid drawing attention to what it IS)) as well!) if they're hiring full time. She says yes, boom! I dropped off my resume the next day, and was hired the day after that.
Previous instances where I had tried to find another job were not very fruitful. When I applied for a job at Jungle Jim's to work at their resturant, it took them THREE WEEKS to get back to me and by that time I had already resigned my fate to being an employee of the verge for a while longer (This was about a year ago now.)
So yes, I'm a proud employee of Sam's Original Recipe: Take Out. It's such a welcome change of responsibility. Even though I was sick of pizza places and wanted a change. I was at the point where I'll take anything that isn't a call center. There's this voice in the back of your mind that says you need a change when you're going in to work and you feel like any given day you could snap at any time.
The boss is very easy going and he's great to work for, he's by far my favorite business owner that I've encountered. The Pictou County area is very frustrating to job hunt and this is especially so because of business owners. This is a separate rant in of itself but I'm thankful that I managed to get a job where I don't have to worry about my superiors. All I have to worry about is the job I am doing and that I'm doing it right.
I miss the people, I had made a lot of great friends at The Verge and I miss everyone. There was great fodder in discussion because everyone was so desperate to get their mind off of that place for 15 minutes of their day. I see people on occasion and I still talk to some of my old co-workers from over there so that's good. I miss the people, I don't miss the duties or the bullshit at all.
The Verge had to be the only job I've ever had where you could do your job AS GOOD AS YOU CAN DO IT, and yet, it's not good enough. All you were ever reminded of was, what needed to be done better, what you couldn't do, what you couldn't say, everything was negative reinforcement. There is next to no attempt to boost morale the easiest way they can... WITH A POSITIVE ENVIROMENT!
Now this is virtually impossible to achieve with the structure they have in the project. The standards are the priority, if the site doesn't meet the standards, everyone hears about it. Everyone gets pretty sick of hearing about it because it's just one more thread of bullshit on the bullshit sweater. When you've got over 200 people feeling the same way, it's virtually impossible to keep your head above water in that place. That's why I needed a way out.
So, it's a pay cut, and a loss of hours but for some peace of mind, I'll sling pizza's again :)
Where to begin, let's start off with I GOT A NEW JOB!!!
Yes, I got my get out of jail free card.
There was a new pizza place that opened up over a month ago now. On a whim, I figured I would try it because I love pizza more than anything. I ask the woman, (who coincidentally also used to work at The Verge (( I will call it "the verge" to avoid drawing attention to what it IS)) as well!) if they're hiring full time. She says yes, boom! I dropped off my resume the next day, and was hired the day after that.
Previous instances where I had tried to find another job were not very fruitful. When I applied for a job at Jungle Jim's to work at their resturant, it took them THREE WEEKS to get back to me and by that time I had already resigned my fate to being an employee of the verge for a while longer (This was about a year ago now.)
So yes, I'm a proud employee of Sam's Original Recipe: Take Out. It's such a welcome change of responsibility. Even though I was sick of pizza places and wanted a change. I was at the point where I'll take anything that isn't a call center. There's this voice in the back of your mind that says you need a change when you're going in to work and you feel like any given day you could snap at any time.
The boss is very easy going and he's great to work for, he's by far my favorite business owner that I've encountered. The Pictou County area is very frustrating to job hunt and this is especially so because of business owners. This is a separate rant in of itself but I'm thankful that I managed to get a job where I don't have to worry about my superiors. All I have to worry about is the job I am doing and that I'm doing it right.
I miss the people, I had made a lot of great friends at The Verge and I miss everyone. There was great fodder in discussion because everyone was so desperate to get their mind off of that place for 15 minutes of their day. I see people on occasion and I still talk to some of my old co-workers from over there so that's good. I miss the people, I don't miss the duties or the bullshit at all.
The Verge had to be the only job I've ever had where you could do your job AS GOOD AS YOU CAN DO IT, and yet, it's not good enough. All you were ever reminded of was, what needed to be done better, what you couldn't do, what you couldn't say, everything was negative reinforcement. There is next to no attempt to boost morale the easiest way they can... WITH A POSITIVE ENVIROMENT!
Now this is virtually impossible to achieve with the structure they have in the project. The standards are the priority, if the site doesn't meet the standards, everyone hears about it. Everyone gets pretty sick of hearing about it because it's just one more thread of bullshit on the bullshit sweater. When you've got over 200 people feeling the same way, it's virtually impossible to keep your head above water in that place. That's why I needed a way out.
So, it's a pay cut, and a loss of hours but for some peace of mind, I'll sling pizza's again :)
Monday, August 22, 2011
Jack Layton (July 18, 1950 - August 22, 2011)
I'm not inside my own mind today... and my hopes for Canada have sputtered with the passing of a passionate Canadian today.
It's not that I'm so cynical to believe there is not another individual fit to run this country. I just don't believe that individual, whoever he or she may be, is active in politics at the national scale at this time. I thought Jack Layton was the real deal, and with his passing now I am not sure what the future holds for Canada.
I wasn't always a Jack Layton supporter. With first impressions, I found him boring and uninspiring. I compared him to the old man that goes to church every Sunday. Before the 2011 election. Jack Layton was just another part of the broken system that I have come to despise and with his passing I feel virtually doomed for Canadian politics. How could one man turn it all around with one election? I don't know... maybe I was so desperate to feel hope for a better Canada and I, and many other Canadians, put that hope on Jack Layton's shoulders.
He lost his battle to cancer today. I send my condolences out to his family and loved ones. I'm sure this news was unexpected, but maybe those closest to him had braced themselves for the worst. I knew he was having health troubles in the last election and his cancer came back but you would never have known it.
For a man who was battling as hard as he was to show as much passion and fire for Canada during the last election it was frankly refreshing to see a politician that believed what he was saying in his heard as opposed to every single speech Stephen Harper has given in the past 6+ years where every word he says has been meticulously selected for the desired effect. That effect destroyed by his robotic mannerisms BUT I digress... I will not turn this into a Stephen Harper shit show...
For a man battling that hard to come out and give it his 110%. To come so close to that goal and then succumb to this. It's awful. Jack Layton was inspiring during the last election and I'm sure the opposition would call it what they would 'strategic voting'. It's bullshit. Canadian's rallied behind a man they believed in and that man was Jack Layton... Canadian's also rallied behind our favorite robot, Harper... ether way it was Canada's choice.
I will remember Jack Layton for that passion he brought to the last election. If he had shown it the election previous, I would have stopped throwing my vote at the Green Party so that I could take solace in the fact that I voted at all. It was that passion for Canada that attracted Canadians. Crazy how that works isn't it? Voting for a man who projects genuine interest in the country I live in and the people who populate it? That's fucked up...
He leaves the NDP party in the best shape it's ever been in. I don't know but I just get the feeling by the next election that the NDP will have lost that. Whoever they pick to succeed Jack Layton will need to have that same fire. The attitude and dare I say swagger that they want what's best for Canadians, not for Canada or "their" Canada. Jack Layton will leave behind the legacy that he did what he had to in an impromptu election and it got the NDP the most seats in the house they've ever had. THAT is Jack Layton's work right there. Nobody else in the NDP has created that kind of movement because they didn't try to speak to Canadians the way Jack Layton did. They didn't try to resonate with Canadian's the way Jack Layton did.
Layton showed me that a politician just needs to try to reach the hearts of his voting base. That's basically what Obama did. If the Conservatives didn't put their entire strategy into the "bashing the liberals" basket, and it having worked so well. Maybe Layton would be the prime minister as more Canadians would have been able to see what Layton was all about rather than Canadians making assumptions based on the ads that Conservatives spammed over TV for months... anyway I digress again.
Rest in Peace, Jack Layton. You will be missed.
It's not that I'm so cynical to believe there is not another individual fit to run this country. I just don't believe that individual, whoever he or she may be, is active in politics at the national scale at this time. I thought Jack Layton was the real deal, and with his passing now I am not sure what the future holds for Canada.
I wasn't always a Jack Layton supporter. With first impressions, I found him boring and uninspiring. I compared him to the old man that goes to church every Sunday. Before the 2011 election. Jack Layton was just another part of the broken system that I have come to despise and with his passing I feel virtually doomed for Canadian politics. How could one man turn it all around with one election? I don't know... maybe I was so desperate to feel hope for a better Canada and I, and many other Canadians, put that hope on Jack Layton's shoulders.
He lost his battle to cancer today. I send my condolences out to his family and loved ones. I'm sure this news was unexpected, but maybe those closest to him had braced themselves for the worst. I knew he was having health troubles in the last election and his cancer came back but you would never have known it.
For a man who was battling as hard as he was to show as much passion and fire for Canada during the last election it was frankly refreshing to see a politician that believed what he was saying in his heard as opposed to every single speech Stephen Harper has given in the past 6+ years where every word he says has been meticulously selected for the desired effect. That effect destroyed by his robotic mannerisms BUT I digress... I will not turn this into a Stephen Harper shit show...
For a man battling that hard to come out and give it his 110%. To come so close to that goal and then succumb to this. It's awful. Jack Layton was inspiring during the last election and I'm sure the opposition would call it what they would 'strategic voting'. It's bullshit. Canadian's rallied behind a man they believed in and that man was Jack Layton... Canadian's also rallied behind our favorite robot, Harper... ether way it was Canada's choice.
I will remember Jack Layton for that passion he brought to the last election. If he had shown it the election previous, I would have stopped throwing my vote at the Green Party so that I could take solace in the fact that I voted at all. It was that passion for Canada that attracted Canadians. Crazy how that works isn't it? Voting for a man who projects genuine interest in the country I live in and the people who populate it? That's fucked up...
He leaves the NDP party in the best shape it's ever been in. I don't know but I just get the feeling by the next election that the NDP will have lost that. Whoever they pick to succeed Jack Layton will need to have that same fire. The attitude and dare I say swagger that they want what's best for Canadians, not for Canada or "their" Canada. Jack Layton will leave behind the legacy that he did what he had to in an impromptu election and it got the NDP the most seats in the house they've ever had. THAT is Jack Layton's work right there. Nobody else in the NDP has created that kind of movement because they didn't try to speak to Canadians the way Jack Layton did. They didn't try to resonate with Canadian's the way Jack Layton did.
Layton showed me that a politician just needs to try to reach the hearts of his voting base. That's basically what Obama did. If the Conservatives didn't put their entire strategy into the "bashing the liberals" basket, and it having worked so well. Maybe Layton would be the prime minister as more Canadians would have been able to see what Layton was all about rather than Canadians making assumptions based on the ads that Conservatives spammed over TV for months... anyway I digress again.
Rest in Peace, Jack Layton. You will be missed.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Bill Hicks vs Denis Leary
I'm not inside my own mind today... It's like a hero of mine has been broken down.
Now I have a lot of heroes, it's kind of like a recurring joke of sorts but Denis Leary was literally one of them. I'll never forget the first time I heard "No Cure For Cancer" ... I was 12 or 13 tops and I was hanging out with my buddy Bill and my Dad and I talked my dad into letting me listen to it. I knew it was going to be good when my father started with "Well... I probably shouldn't but okay..." and it was hilarious. It was truly where my love for stand up comedy began.
Now I have read about how Denis stole from Bill Hicks but I suppose I chose to be blissfully ignorant about it. Denis' comedy flourished after Bill Hicks death. How much could he have truly stole?
Now my first exposure to Bill Hicks wasn't through his comedy. Searching his comedy one day lead me to this video on Yahoo! Videos where he wasn't doing comedy. No Bill Hicks was on some Podunk public access tv show talking about the Waco travesty and how military personnel allowed a tank to shoot fire into the complex and burn those people alive. It was mind blowing. This man was a comic but the way he handled himself and the way he spoke. He showed intelligence and composure that I have seen out of very few comics. George Carlin was who came to mind for me.
I just recently watched "American: The Bill Hicks Story" and it forced me to see where Denis Leary had certainly... enhanced his own comedy by borrowing mannerisms and style from Bill Hicks. There's no way you can't watch Denis Leary's No Cure For Cancer and then see ANY Bill Hicks stand-up and not draw the same conclusions. Comb the internet for specifics because I am not going to dive into that but what I am going to dive into is a bit of comparison and contrast of sorts. I just wrote about this on Tumblr and Twitter and it motivated me to dive a little deeper.
Denis by no means pulled a Carlos Mencia but what he did was certainly inexcusable. In Denis' second special "Lock and Load" the influence from Bill Hicks is still there but that special is unfiltered and unrestrained Denis. Would Denis have ever been the kind of comedian he became without Bill Hicks' influence? Hell no. Denis' rants about his kids and about Marv Albert on Lock and Load still kill me but it will be No Cure For Cancer that I look at in a different light, and Denis as a whole overall as well. It's a shame that I have lost the respect I had for him but the parallels are there and cannot be ignored.
Bill Hicks' comedy was very progressive especially for when he was bursting on to the scene. He reminds me of George Carlin as I mentioned before but it's because the subject matter and the overall idealism and the engaging of the audience and the requirement of the audience to be proactive thinkers to truly enjoy the material. Bill Hicks was much more direct than George Carlin was though. George took ideas and he made them funny for everyone to enjoy. Bill Hicks took ideas and forced you to stare reality in the face for what it was and the way that he did it was funny...
Comparing Hicks' comedy to Leary's is like night and day. Denis Leary's comedy kind of makes me think of Will Ferrell in a way, he's so loud but he's still funny you can't help but laugh at this outrageous man who is making ridiculous jokes. I think his style was more exaggarated that Bill Hicks. He took Hicks' tendencies to exaggerate to sell a joke and he pretty much made that his entire style. Denis is way more intense than Bill Hicks. I wonder if he wouldn't had stolen Hicks' jokes about smoking and drinking and drugs what direction he would have taken? There would be many parts of No Cure For Cancer which would be nothing if he didn't lift material from Bill Hicks. I'm not advocating it, I'm just pointing out flaws. That's why I prefer Lock and Load because it's a much more complete act in my opinion...
In the end. Denis Leary isn't even a shell of the comedian that Bill Hicks was. And it's a shame that he was never embraced by the mainstream audiences like he should have been. Bill Hicks was a very funny man and his comedy was ahead of his time. I think a modern audience really would have embraced Bill and I bet you he would have this mystique about him. He said things that a lot of us were thinking and he asked questions that we would never ask. He patronized ignorance and he hated it. I think that's why I really like Bill Hicks and everything he represented. If you have never listened to Bill Hicks' stand up comedy, I will sit here and beg you... no I will spam your Twitter or Tumblr or Facebook with links because I think he is somebody that everyone needs to experience.
Why am I so behind on this? PEACE!
Now I have a lot of heroes, it's kind of like a recurring joke of sorts but Denis Leary was literally one of them. I'll never forget the first time I heard "No Cure For Cancer" ... I was 12 or 13 tops and I was hanging out with my buddy Bill and my Dad and I talked my dad into letting me listen to it. I knew it was going to be good when my father started with "Well... I probably shouldn't but okay..." and it was hilarious. It was truly where my love for stand up comedy began.
Now I have read about how Denis stole from Bill Hicks but I suppose I chose to be blissfully ignorant about it. Denis' comedy flourished after Bill Hicks death. How much could he have truly stole?
Now my first exposure to Bill Hicks wasn't through his comedy. Searching his comedy one day lead me to this video on Yahoo! Videos where he wasn't doing comedy. No Bill Hicks was on some Podunk public access tv show talking about the Waco travesty and how military personnel allowed a tank to shoot fire into the complex and burn those people alive. It was mind blowing. This man was a comic but the way he handled himself and the way he spoke. He showed intelligence and composure that I have seen out of very few comics. George Carlin was who came to mind for me.
I just recently watched "American: The Bill Hicks Story" and it forced me to see where Denis Leary had certainly... enhanced his own comedy by borrowing mannerisms and style from Bill Hicks. There's no way you can't watch Denis Leary's No Cure For Cancer and then see ANY Bill Hicks stand-up and not draw the same conclusions. Comb the internet for specifics because I am not going to dive into that but what I am going to dive into is a bit of comparison and contrast of sorts. I just wrote about this on Tumblr and Twitter and it motivated me to dive a little deeper.
Denis by no means pulled a Carlos Mencia but what he did was certainly inexcusable. In Denis' second special "Lock and Load" the influence from Bill Hicks is still there but that special is unfiltered and unrestrained Denis. Would Denis have ever been the kind of comedian he became without Bill Hicks' influence? Hell no. Denis' rants about his kids and about Marv Albert on Lock and Load still kill me but it will be No Cure For Cancer that I look at in a different light, and Denis as a whole overall as well. It's a shame that I have lost the respect I had for him but the parallels are there and cannot be ignored.
Bill Hicks' comedy was very progressive especially for when he was bursting on to the scene. He reminds me of George Carlin as I mentioned before but it's because the subject matter and the overall idealism and the engaging of the audience and the requirement of the audience to be proactive thinkers to truly enjoy the material. Bill Hicks was much more direct than George Carlin was though. George took ideas and he made them funny for everyone to enjoy. Bill Hicks took ideas and forced you to stare reality in the face for what it was and the way that he did it was funny...
Comparing Hicks' comedy to Leary's is like night and day. Denis Leary's comedy kind of makes me think of Will Ferrell in a way, he's so loud but he's still funny you can't help but laugh at this outrageous man who is making ridiculous jokes. I think his style was more exaggarated that Bill Hicks. He took Hicks' tendencies to exaggerate to sell a joke and he pretty much made that his entire style. Denis is way more intense than Bill Hicks. I wonder if he wouldn't had stolen Hicks' jokes about smoking and drinking and drugs what direction he would have taken? There would be many parts of No Cure For Cancer which would be nothing if he didn't lift material from Bill Hicks. I'm not advocating it, I'm just pointing out flaws. That's why I prefer Lock and Load because it's a much more complete act in my opinion...
In the end. Denis Leary isn't even a shell of the comedian that Bill Hicks was. And it's a shame that he was never embraced by the mainstream audiences like he should have been. Bill Hicks was a very funny man and his comedy was ahead of his time. I think a modern audience really would have embraced Bill and I bet you he would have this mystique about him. He said things that a lot of us were thinking and he asked questions that we would never ask. He patronized ignorance and he hated it. I think that's why I really like Bill Hicks and everything he represented. If you have never listened to Bill Hicks' stand up comedy, I will sit here and beg you... no I will spam your Twitter or Tumblr or Facebook with links because I think he is somebody that everyone needs to experience.
Why am I so behind on this? PEACE!
The Madden Paradox
I'm not inside my own mind today... and I have a fucking video game to thank for it!
Ever since I got my first Nintendo 64, with Madden NFL 2000, I officially became a Madden addict. I had played the 2K sports "Gameday" football for Playstation 2 and thought that was okay but I never really got into it like I did with Madden... this was something else.
My madden obsession lasted most of that decade, I bought the game pretty consistently up to Madden 09, maybe buying it every other year. I bought Madden 10 and traded it in after a few weeks. I was sick and tired of the same bullshit. It FINALLY hit me that I had been buying the same game for years and with the Xbox 360 generation this repetition seemed just that much more blatant.
There are little things you notice as a sports games that begin to grate you. Madden 11's franchise mode, for the most part is exactly the same as Madden 07's for my Xbox and the 07 one is BETTER... how the fuck does that work? Anyway nitpicky things aside. I had to take a hiatus from buying Madden. For the benefit of my soul...
I tried other football games. I think I even blogged about how much I was looking forward to Backbreaker, hoping it would be of all things a Madden Breaker...
Well let's just say not even close.
With the addition of Cleveland Brown Peyton Hillis as the Madden 12 cover athlete thanks to rabid Browns fans voting. (I myself didn't vote until the final because I am still paranoid about the CURSE and Hillis is probably our best football player...)
I was still rather ho-hum about Madden this year until E3. That's when EA Sports brought out the big guns and gave me some hope, legitimate hope that they would be overhauling this game in the aspects that I treasure most, franchise mode.
Now I can't predict if or not these upgrades are monumental or just face value hooks for gamers like myself who have abandoned the game in recent years but from what I've seen of gameplay videos and reviews it seems pretty much like the real deal to me. I will spare you all the details of what they will be improving but for once they're actually focusing on GAMEPLAY rather than just glorifying the PRESENTATION and they have worked that up too by introducing team-specific introductions (to mirror the NCAA Game) and also tweaking the player tackling physics to create less pre-canned tackling animations. JUST to name a few...
The thing about Madden, this is the paradox, is that once I get excited for Madden. I NEED Madden... I don't feel like playing any other sports games. I know Madden is raising the bar, my inner-fan has seen this in action to a degree and now no other sports games are going to suffice until I can whet my appetite with the new MADDEN. I needs it. So... I've been playing Mass Effect 2 AGAIN... because I have to wait until the end of august to get my Madden fix (assuming I'll have the money to afford it) I will need to tie my attention to other games to fill the void. :)
Until next time ... PEACE
Ever since I got my first Nintendo 64, with Madden NFL 2000, I officially became a Madden addict. I had played the 2K sports "Gameday" football for Playstation 2 and thought that was okay but I never really got into it like I did with Madden... this was something else.
My madden obsession lasted most of that decade, I bought the game pretty consistently up to Madden 09, maybe buying it every other year. I bought Madden 10 and traded it in after a few weeks. I was sick and tired of the same bullshit. It FINALLY hit me that I had been buying the same game for years and with the Xbox 360 generation this repetition seemed just that much more blatant.
There are little things you notice as a sports games that begin to grate you. Madden 11's franchise mode, for the most part is exactly the same as Madden 07's for my Xbox and the 07 one is BETTER... how the fuck does that work? Anyway nitpicky things aside. I had to take a hiatus from buying Madden. For the benefit of my soul...
I tried other football games. I think I even blogged about how much I was looking forward to Backbreaker, hoping it would be of all things a Madden Breaker...
Well let's just say not even close.
With the addition of Cleveland Brown Peyton Hillis as the Madden 12 cover athlete thanks to rabid Browns fans voting. (I myself didn't vote until the final because I am still paranoid about the CURSE and Hillis is probably our best football player...)
I was still rather ho-hum about Madden this year until E3. That's when EA Sports brought out the big guns and gave me some hope, legitimate hope that they would be overhauling this game in the aspects that I treasure most, franchise mode.
Now I can't predict if or not these upgrades are monumental or just face value hooks for gamers like myself who have abandoned the game in recent years but from what I've seen of gameplay videos and reviews it seems pretty much like the real deal to me. I will spare you all the details of what they will be improving but for once they're actually focusing on GAMEPLAY rather than just glorifying the PRESENTATION and they have worked that up too by introducing team-specific introductions (to mirror the NCAA Game) and also tweaking the player tackling physics to create less pre-canned tackling animations. JUST to name a few...
The thing about Madden, this is the paradox, is that once I get excited for Madden. I NEED Madden... I don't feel like playing any other sports games. I know Madden is raising the bar, my inner-fan has seen this in action to a degree and now no other sports games are going to suffice until I can whet my appetite with the new MADDEN. I needs it. So... I've been playing Mass Effect 2 AGAIN... because I have to wait until the end of august to get my Madden fix (assuming I'll have the money to afford it) I will need to tie my attention to other games to fill the void. :)
Until next time ... PEACE
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