5.17.2009

Power without intelligence

Lately it has become increasingly obvious for me that there are far too many people out there with undeserved authority. People with the ability to dominate and control others without an ounce of respect and knowledge to actually make good for it. There's a wide variety of these people too. They may be alcoholics or drug users whose intelligence has been damaged enough to make them think that they know everything or whose senses have been dulled enough for them to act upon their emotions more often without being hindered by fear or guilt. The end result usually being that they act like complete assholes without shame and often step on the boundaries of what is socially acceptable, often at the expense of others.

The other kind, who are even worse and the reason I wrote this, are all these rich kid brats. People who only have power because they were born with it and a heap of cash. How can you possibly expect them to act responsibly when they were just given what could very well be the heart's desire of the common man. Yes given, because no one deserves to simply HAVE endless wealth, power and resources upon birth. This person may be your boss. A person whose only merit in life was that he has a dad with more fame and money than yours. This is a person who might very well control large parts of your life without having the slightest idea of what it's like to be a common man, yet acts like he's somehow better than all of us.

I've gotten sick and tired of people like this lately. Always intruding in my life. Trying to tell me what to do despite not having earned even an ounce of the priveledge and experience needed to govern others fairly. 

Scholars (such as teachers) tend to be better at this. Why? Because they actually have to work for a position. Because they actually have to educate themselves in order to get a job. Because they usually govern based on knowledge, experience and with a better sense of their own position in the world. 

As an example
Personally I'd like to think of myself as a good Tekken player, maybe even a sort of scholar in the subject. I played Tekken with teachers on my school and younger girls on the same school. I've played total scrubs, average players and tournament winners. I've dominated some opposition and suffered humiliating defeats to others. I've studied FAQs, spent endless hours just practicing and learning the lingo. I've made my own Asuka blogg where I try to pass onto others what I've learned in my matches and so on.

The point is that everything I have and everything I am on the Tekken scene is what I earned. I can't defeat the top players of the world because I didn't invest as much time as them but I can beat casual players like drums because I'm much more serious than they are. I wasn't born with the arcade stick in  my hand and an awesome knack for Tekken, I had to fucking train, a LOT.

Because you're not born with skills like that, you always have to work for them. No exceptions. So just because you're born with an authoritarian personality and a lof of money it doesn't make you a great leader. Quite the opposite in fact, you're born into being a SHITTY leader just like everyone else! You start out with blank slate, no exceptions, and all that money and authoritarian personality isn't going to make you any better at anything! Because guess what, without a fucking ladder to climb you're not going to get anywhere!

So fuck you, brats of the world. Try making a living without a home for two months and then see if you've actually earned any of the priveledges you enjoy. You all make me sick.

11.14.2008

Tele2... fuck you Tele2

Being caught working for Tele2 is like being caught punching a baby; it really should be a federal offense. Yeah I know you guys got off my back after the state office intervened but as promised I'll continue to give you lazy fucks the worst publicity that I can muster, you deserve every syllable. The next time you see a Tele2 booth, give them the finger from me.

10.25.2008

The problem with fighting games

EDIT: I fixed some of the errors found in the text, thanks for the heads up.

Note that this is a translated excerpt from a forum post I just made on the topic of whether introducing new games, especially 2D titles, into the community would be worth the hassle. I am responding to subjects as whether or not playing a game with no scene is worth the time of day, whether or not there's a point in playing a game that only one person has, if it's meaningful to buy a title that no one will be playing in two weeks and also I'm lashing out at the dominance that Capcom had over the entire community for the past decade despite not making the effort to actually releas new games until just recently.


"The problem with today's fighting gamers is that no one seems to every play the games for fun or even because they are GOOD anymore. It's only about community, tournaments, winning streaks and match videos with celebrity players. The fact that fighting games are like any other video game, part of a medium designed primarily around entertainment, is something that seems all but forgotten. In the end reality has been twisted to the point where people are still playing their ten year old fighting games (I won't mention any names though Capcom games in general should feel targeted) either because they don't know any better or simply decided to jump on already existing bandwagons because they simply can't be bothered. That kind of behavior is usually referred to as backtracking.

To have or not to have isn't even part of the debate anymore because I know for a fact that it means nothing whether the games in question can be provided or not. I would gladly sponsor everyone in the area with a copy each of King of Fighters XI if I didn't already, from previous experience, know that it would be a waste of time and money. And if we're talking about learning curves; let me ask you how long it takes for seasoned fighting gamers to learn a character from an old classic like World Heroes 2 which only uses three buttons? 5 minutes? 10? Regardless, the problem lies in the fact that most players these days aren't prepared to dedicate even that time to try something new to them, even out of curiosity.

We talked a little about how ungrateful being a fighting gamer can be and yes, it can get really hairy every now and then. But maybe, just maybe it wouldn't be so damn bad if such large parts of the entire community still wasn't completely focused on only doing their own thing. Just look at the lingo from different games as an example; 1234 in Tekken and SC respectively doesn't mean even nearly the same thing, and these were made by the same company. Similarly A and B in SC and KOF uses the same terminology for two entirely different things, a mid in 3D is called an overhead in 2D and it just keep going on like that. Sure, it doesn't help that the companies that make these games often somehow try to establish their franchises by coming up with new names for things. Anyone still remember that a “super combo” was originally invented as “desperation move” before a certain company desired to change it up or that a “parry” was originally called “deflect”? But even so I still don't think I've seen many communities that ended up so divided and whose members are so concerned about hanging out in groups, or even having members being forced to simply stick with the group that is the closest to their interests in hopes of getting any playtime at all.

At the same time the whole fighting game genre is in the middle of the biggest comeback since the mid 90s, yet no one seems to bother taking a loot at the world outside of their little corner made from whatever fighting game series you hold above all others. I honestly don't give a damn about how Street Fighter 4 turns out as a game, all I care about is new players coming in and enjoying a game that was neither played to death like a broken vinyl five years ago nor taking 18 months of playtime before anyone even bothers to remember your name.

All in all I think that fighting games are like the wine in a documentary I just saw on public service TV the other day; if you only drink the brands that people tell you to drink then you are doing it WRONG! It's nothing short of a miracle that there are so many titles out the entire population of the western hemisphere only bother to play five of them. Regardless of their reasons for doing so.

So if anyone feels particularly moved by this go to Ebay and buy the first title you find at the to of the fighting game genre list, I'd be surprised if you had to spend more than a measily 30 bucks for it nowadays. Bloody Roar, Fatal Fury, Rise 2 Resurrection, Brutal Paws: of Fury, Mortal Kombat 3, Toshinden 2, Street Fighter the bloody movie game or fucking Shaq Fu. As long as it's something that you don't have, I dare you! If you want anyone to join in, I'll be on it, I don't care if it's a bloody game boy port of power rangers that you dig up!

And by the way, considering that virtually every fighter produced between 1990 and 2003 is available on emulators (and everything after that being relatively easy to get hold of cheaply) I say there are no excuses about not getting hold of specific titles. I would gladly hand them out myself if I had to.

Well if nothing else, thanks goes out to the people who bothered reading my entire rant.

Hex off"


Original rant can be found at: http://www.bitterharmony.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2001&start=270

9.26.2008

Speak like the devil pt. 2

As an atheist I tend to get a lot of existential questions from curious or and crititcal religious people alike. One of the most common being "how can you NOT believe that there is an afterlife?" after a lot of gibberish about souls along with a few comments about how cynical it is to believe that you're the food of worms once you're dead.

Well first of all let me get one thing straight, regardless of my beliefs I do not plan to end up as worm food. That's what happens when you get buried in a coffin, underground, in a cemetery, which is the last thing I want. Burn me, use my body to make a fancy skeleton to teach biology classes, pilfer my organs or hell, donate the corpse to the local club of necrophiliacs. Just do me the favour of not having my body be part of religious traditions and add to their false sense of legitimacy. So there, I said it.

As for death itself, what does an atheist think death is like? Well I thought about it for a while and I’ve come up with a simple answer. Think back, waaay back. What did you experience during the tenth century? Were you alive? I think not. So what was it like? Do you have any memories of the time you spent not being a part of existence? The time before you were born? Try hard and you might get a glimpse of what I am pointing at-it’s called entropy.

Simply put you didn’t feel anything because you didn’t have a body to feel, you don’t remember any of it because you didn’t have a brain to remember with, you weren’t aware of your current state of non-existence because you didn’t have an awareness to be aware of. A blank slate, a transparent nothing. That’s what you were then, and that’s what you will be when you die. No memories, no personal quirks, no stress, no worries, no planning, no nothing. That’s what it means to be dead and that’s what you will likely believe as someone free from delusions of heaven. It may sound like a harsh or even sad truth, but honestly, once you’re dead you won’t care because naturally there’s no sadness there either. You’re just… gone.

With that in mind I think it’s obvious that it doesn’t matter what happens to your body, all you really have to do is perhaps take those still alive into consideration. Perhaps THEY would like to see a proper burial? Well that’s what your last will is for, give them the piece of mind to tell them what you really want and be done with it, it’s not like you’ll ever be able to do anything else ever again.

5.18.2008

Yuri is where it's at! (Part 1)

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