“And the future, it’s here, it’s bright, it’s now.” -Regina Spektor, Machine

We wake up with our music, our alarm, technologically geared to our time frame. We eat our breakfast, brand name and all, as we watch the televised imagination of our world unfold. We go to work, while smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee with a name stamped on it. We read magazines of people showing us how to live, and we do exactly what they say. We go home to watch a football game sponsored by someone with a halftime report sponsored by someone with commercials in between every first down. And while it may make my life easier, I can’t help but thinking of “Now!”

Did you know that Now! 36 has been released? It came out November 9, 2010, with hits like my personal favorite, “Dynamite” and my not so personal favorite, “Teenage Dream.” While the “Now that’s what I call Music” series has gone on internationally since 1983, it started in the U.S. with it’s first release in 1998. So you must be thinking, “how are there 36 of these when the U.S. albums are only 12 years running.” Well it’s not only for profit, but maybe there’s a whole angle we’re missing here, and finding it out may make me hate reality.

You’ll never guess what’s on the first Now unless you owned it. The only thing I guessed correctly was that it probably had a Backstreet Boys or N’Sync song. Sure enough, “As Long as you Love Me” was the number two track. Others included “Say you’ll be there” by the Spice Girls, “Zoot Suit Riot” by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, and “Barbie Girl” by Aqua.

Different times.

It is amazing how much things have changed, and it makes you give the go ahead for 36 other albums. But there’s a bit of information I’m leaving out, and it’s the information that got me thinking about reality and what it’s all about: also on Now 1 is “Karma Police” by Radiohead.

I literally put my hands on my head and pulled some hair out in sheer horror of being another sucker of the mass production of advertising. “Karma Police?” Let’s be clear: Karma Police on Radiohead’s album of Ok Computer is not the reason why I adore Radiohead. If anything I’ve heard this song maybe four or five times. Yet here it was, a song by them on the first Now.

Was I just another pawn? Another man who was played for twelve years by some back stage puppet master? In short, yes and no.

“People want to be told what to do so badly, that they’ll listen to anyone” -Don Draper

While Don may not have been right about the direction of cigarettes or television, he was most certainly right about this. In this scene, Don Draper is replying to a criticizing hippie about the evil nature of advertising. “How do you sleep at night?” the attacker questions. Don replies, “on a bed full of money.”

Don Draper’s job is not easy, but it’s probably not hard either. From the house to work and back again, people are probably going to be flooded with information. What’s the latest this? Can I get that for cheap? Will my life be better off with this? Is my family going to appreciate that? The world is full of opportunities, and wasting away all of your money on products is certainly one of them.

Media may be the middle man of my manifestation of malevolence toward material reality. It is in music with which I imagine the world. Daydreams flicker as I listen to Radiohead. Musicals are joined by me as I listen to Regina Spektor. Michael Bublé serenades me as I get into a suit and tie. Nuclear Bombs explode on the far horizon as I listen to rock music. Hindsight feels so much better after watching Mad Men. Life feels so much more satisfying when I read Ayn Rand.

I could go on, but this is but a taste of the hefty meal we are being fed in order to live on day by day.

I will give you my best and often times craziest example. My philosophy of life is based around a medium that is ridiculed and talked down to. My way of expressing my opinions is based upon something that is mocked and made fun of even at church services.

My very soul was changed because of a video game.

Video Games

You may mock me, but this is no different than a change of opinion because of a book or a play or a movie. Understand that with growing technology, video games are not just repeats of Pong. It is a growing art form, where we are able to experience the lives of a military man without the psychological strain. We are able to visit other planets without a rocket. We are able to destroy hordes without ever carrying a sword. We are able to decide the fate of an entire race with the touch of a button.

This is what I’m talking about, and the game that changed me was Bioshock.

 Released in 2007, the game featured an underwater city and was a first person shooter (FPS). I knew nothing more about it until Bobby Kirkpatrick brought me over to play the demo. While the game looked appealing, I was an experienced gamer, and I could see technical laggings in some parts. The game just didn’t feel up to date, and I got confused at some parts. What the demo lacked in technical achievement, it made up for in storytelling and atmosphere. The man behind it all, Andrew Ryan, had become so fed up with life on the surface. There was no escaping the guilt laden sacrificial societies that existed there.

    “I am Andrew Ryan, and I’m here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No says the man in Washington it belongs to the poor. No says the man in the Vatican it belongs to God. No says the man in Moscow, it belongs to everyone. I rejected these answers, and instead I chose to build: Rapture. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture, can become your city as well.”

After a horrific plane crash, you are the sole survivor trapped in the massive deep of the Atlantic ocean. You turn around and suddenly you see a lighthouse. You enter the dark, but dry island and take an underwater elevator that takes you through this fantastic speech and finally to the hidden city of Rapture itself. Glory is on the horizon, but instead, horror awaits you.

From the moment you enter the city, you know something is wrong. Lunatics in party masks armed with hooks are butchering people. Screams sound in the dark. Luggage is scattered across the floor along with broken protest signs that decree, “Rapture is DEAD.” For the rest of the game, you must uncover the secrets that are hidden behind the propaganda posters and leaking pipe lines and abandoned art houses, and mutilated bodies.

Then I left my youth pastor’s house and went outside. Cars were blandly going by, my blue truck waiting as patiently as ever for me, and the sky was cloudless. Reality indeed.

Fascinated, that very same day, because I had a job, I bought Bioshock and played it immediately. What this led to was a roller coaster I could not imagine even existed. Eventually the conclusion of this game was so great, I had no choice but to do research while serving as a teacher aid for an English teacher Senior year. After a mere ten minutes, I came up with an intellectual source for the game of Bioshock: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

“What do you think of Ayn Rand?”, I asked Karen Hillier, my sophomore English teacher. “She’s kind of weird”, she replied. Not good enough.“What to you think of Ayn Rand?”, I asked Renee Simons, my senior year English teacher.“I hate her”, she replied. Good enough for me.

While on the way to a TMEA choir concert, I bought Atlas Shrugged for $25 dollars at a Borders in a mall. The book never left my side for two more months. A whopping 1200 pages, it was awkward hauling it from class to class without a backpack. Not only that, my copy featured a naked Atlas holding up the title. People I guess somehow assumed that it was a massive gay book.

Idiots.

What it was inspired a complete way of life that changed the lens through which I perceived the whole world. I personally emailed 2K, the makers of Bioshock, and thanked them for changing my life. Since then I have read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand, Anthem by Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, and own a Lexicon of her ideas by her spiritual successor Leanord Peikoff. I have watched a documentary of her life. I am reading The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand to help in possibly writing a book in the future. She is without a doubt, my favorite author.

This is why if you say, “Video Games are stupid” I will probably never listen to you ever again. And this is why I have a lot less respect for the pastor of The Village Church Matt Chandler. Matt Chandler is a man who always makes a metaphor that there are dumb men out there, and he always, ALWAYS uses video games as the medium through which he describes these dumb men. His description is paraphrased as something like this…

“There are men out there, who do nothing but play video games. You will not get better at life by playing Halo.”

And while some may be more detailed, he mentions other hobbies much less. I’m sorry Matt Chandler, you’re wrong, you’re dead wrong, but you and so many others seek to use video games as a stepping stool toward whatever agenda you need. You insult me, and you insult so many others who use my hobby by stating that the exaggerated old man who plays non-stop is every video game player to have existed, and we are supposed to feel guilty.

And this is why video games are attacked so often. It all goes back to advertising, and the fact that those shooters in Columbine also played video games. The reason why I feel bad and not bad for “Karma Police” being on Now 1 is because although it is there and my life is being sold to me, I still enjoy it, and with that I’m satisfied. The reason why people hate video games is because they assume people cannot think for themselves, and are just pushed and pulled by anything and anyone. “Those darn kids played violent games, and they just killed over a dozen students. Video Games must cause kids to kill people.”

WRONG. You’re so wrong it’s hilarious, because over a million players just got online and played Call of Duty, a game where you kill hundreds of people an hour, and there is not mass murder in real life (except for wars, which are started by Governments and politics).

Reality sucks, and this is why. It’s because no matter what I do in life, it will not be the way I’m supposed to live it. “Buy this because the people that matter have this.” If I read Atlas Shrugged, I’m selfish. If I play video games, I’m a nerd. If I work out, I’m a juicer. If I smoke, I’m engraving my tombstone. If you ask me, I’d rather not listen to it and listen to Radiohead, even if they were on Now1. If you ask me, I’d rather watch Mad Men and wish I was there instead of here. If you ask me, I’d rather avoid all the controversy and play some damn video games.

“And the future, it’s here, it’s bright, it’s now.” -Regina Spektor, Machine

We wake up with our music, our alarm, technologically geared to our time frame. We eat our breakfast, brand name and all, as we watch the televised imagination of our world unfold. We go to work, while smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee with a name stamped on it. We read magazines of people showing us how to live, and we do exactly what they say. We go home to watch a football game sponsored by someone with a halftime report sponsored by someone with commercials in between every first down. And while it may make my life easier, I can’t help but thinking of “Now!”

Did you know that Now! 36 has been released? It came out November 9, 2010, with hits like my personal favorite, “Dynamite” and my not so personal favorite, “Teenage Dream.” While the “Now that’s what I call Music” series has gone on internationally since 1983, it started in the U.S. with it’s first release in 1998. So you must be thinking, “how are there 36 of these when the U.S. albums are only 12 years running.” Well it’s not only for profit, but maybe there’s a whole angle we’re missing here, and finding it out may make me hate reality.

You’ll never guess what’s on the first Now unless you owned it. The only thing I guessed correctly was that it probably had a Backstreet Boys or N’Sync song. Sure enough, “As Long as you Love Me” was the number two track. Others included “Say you’ll be there” by the Spice Girls, “Zoot Suit Riot” by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, and “Barbie Girl” by Aqua.

Different times.

It is amazing how much things have changed, and it makes you give the go ahead for 36 other albums. But there’s a bit of information I’m leaving out, and it’s the information that got me thinking about reality and what it’s all about: also on Now 1 is “Karma Police” by Radiohead.

I literally put my hands on my head and pulled some hair out in sheer horror of being another sucker of the mass production of advertising. “Karma Police?” Let’s be clear: Karma Police on Radiohead’s album of Ok Computer is not the reason why I adore Radiohead. If anything I’ve heard this song maybe four or five times. Yet here it was, a song by them on the first Now.

Was I just another pawn? Another man who was played for twelve years by some back stage puppet master? In short, yes and no.

“People want to be told what to do so badly, that they’ll listen to anyone” -Don Draper

While Don may not have been right about the direction of cigarettes or television, he was most certainly right about this. In this scene, Don Draper is replying to a criticizing hippie about the evil nature of advertising. “How do you sleep at night?” the attacker questions. Don replies, “on a bed full of money.”

Don Draper’s job is not easy, but it’s probably not hard either. From the house to work and back again, people are probably going to be flooded with information. What’s the latest this? Can I get that for cheap? Will my life be better off with this? Is my family going to appreciate that? The world is full of opportunities, and wasting away all of your money on products is certainly one of them.

Media may be the middle man of my manifestation of malevolence toward material reality. It is in music with which I imagine the world. Daydreams flicker as I listen to Radiohead. Musicals are joined by me as I listen to Regina Spektor. Michael Bublé serenades me as I get into a suit and tie. Nuclear Bombs explode on the far horizon as I listen to rock music. Hindsight feels so much better after watching Mad Men. Life feels so much more satisfying when I read Ayn Rand.

I could go on, but this is but a taste of the hefty meal we are being fed in order to live on day by day.

I will give you my best and often times craziest example. My philosophy of life is based around a medium that is ridiculed and talked down to. My way of expressing my opinions is based upon something that is mocked and made fun of even at church services.

My very soul was changed because of a video game.

Video Games

You may mock me, but this is no different than a change of opinion because of a book or a play or a movie. Understand that with growing technology, video games are not just repeats of Pong. It is a growing art form, where we are able to experience the lives of a military man without the psychological strain. We are able to visit other planets without a rocket. We are able to destroy hordes without ever carrying a sword. We are able to decide the fate of an entire race with the touch of a button.

This is what I’m talking about, and the game that changed me was Bioshock.

 Released in 2007, the game featured an underwater city and was a first person shooter (FPS). I knew nothing more about it until Bobby Kirkpatrick brought me over to play the demo. While the game looked appealing, I was an experienced gamer, and I could see technical laggings in some parts. The game just didn’t feel up to date, and I got confused at some parts. What the demo lacked in technical achievement, it made up for in storytelling and atmosphere. The man behind it all, Andrew Ryan, had become so fed up with life on the surface. There was no escaping the guilt laden sacrificial societies that existed there.

    “I am Andrew Ryan, and I’m here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No says the man in Washington it belongs to the poor. No says the man in the Vatican it belongs to God. No says the man in Moscow, it belongs to everyone. I rejected these answers, and instead I chose to build: Rapture. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture, can become your city as well.”

After a horrific plane crash, you are the sole survivor trapped in the massive deep of the Atlantic ocean. You turn around and suddenly you see a lighthouse. You enter the dark, but dry island and take an underwater elevator that takes you through this fantastic speech and finally to the hidden city of Rapture itself. Glory is on the horizon, but instead, horror awaits you.

From the moment you enter the city, you know something is wrong. Lunatics in party masks armed with hooks are butchering people. Screams sound in the dark. Luggage is scattered across the floor along with broken protest signs that decree, “Rapture is DEAD.” For the rest of the game, you must uncover the secrets that are hidden behind the propaganda posters and leaking pipe lines and abandoned art houses, and mutilated bodies.

Then I left my youth pastor’s house and went outside. Cars were blandly going by, my blue truck waiting as patiently as ever for me, and the sky was cloudless. Reality indeed.

Fascinated, that very same day, because I had a job, I bought Bioshock and played it immediately. What this led to was a roller coaster I could not imagine even existed. Eventually the conclusion of this game was so great, I had no choice but to do research while serving as a teacher aid for an English teacher Senior year. After a mere ten minutes, I came up with an intellectual source for the game of Bioshock: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

“What do you think of Ayn Rand?”, I asked Karen Hillier, my sophomore English teacher. “She’s kind of weird”, she replied. Not good enough.“What to you think of Ayn Rand?”, I asked Renee Simons, my senior year English teacher.“I hate her”, she replied. Good enough for me.

While on the way to a TMEA choir concert, I bought Atlas Shrugged for $25 dollars at a Borders in a mall. The book never left my side for two more months. A whopping 1200 pages, it was awkward hauling it from class to class without a backpack. Not only that, my copy featured a naked Atlas holding up the title. People I guess somehow assumed that it was a massive gay book.

Idiots.

What it was inspired a complete way of life that changed the lens through which I perceived the whole world. I personally emailed 2K, the makers of Bioshock, and thanked them for changing my life. Since then I have read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand, Anthem by Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, and own a Lexicon of her ideas by her spiritual successor Leanord Peikoff. I have watched a documentary of her life. I am reading The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand to help in possibly writing a book in the future. She is without a doubt, my favorite author.

This is why if you say, “Video Games are stupid” I will probably never listen to you ever again. And this is why I have a lot less respect for the pastor of The Village Church Matt Chandler. Matt Chandler is a man who always makes a metaphor that there are dumb men out there, and he always, ALWAYS uses video games as the medium through which he describes these dumb men. His description is paraphrased as something like this…

“There are men out there, who do nothing but play video games. You will not get better at life by playing Halo.”

And while some may be more detailed, he mentions other hobbies much less. I’m sorry Matt Chandler, you’re wrong, you’re dead wrong, but you and so many others seek to use video games as a stepping stool toward whatever agenda you need. You insult me, and you insult so many others who use my hobby by stating that the exaggerated old man who plays non-stop is every video game player to have existed, and we are supposed to feel guilty.

And this is why video games are attacked so often. It all goes back to advertising, and the fact that those shooters in Columbine also played video games. The reason why I feel bad and not bad for “Karma Police” being on Now 1 is because although it is there and my life is being sold to me, I still enjoy it, and with that I’m satisfied. The reason why people hate video games is because they assume people cannot think for themselves, and are just pushed and pulled by anything and anyone. “Those darn kids played violent games, and they just killed over a dozen students. Video Games must cause kids to kill people.”

WRONG. You’re so wrong it’s hilarious, because over a million players just got online and played Call of Duty, a game where you kill hundreds of people an hour, and there is not mass murder in real life (except for wars, which are started by Governments and politics).

Reality sucks, and this is why. It’s because no matter what I do in life, it will not be the way I’m supposed to live it. “Buy this because the people that matter have this.” If I read Atlas Shrugged, I’m selfish. If I play video games, I’m a nerd. If I work out, I’m a juicer. If I smoke, I’m engraving my tombstone. If you ask me, I’d rather not listen to it and listen to Radiohead, even if they were on Now1. If you ask me, I’d rather watch Mad Men and wish I was there instead of here. If you ask me, I’d rather avoid all the controversy and play some damn video games.