Yeah yeah, I know, correlation does not imply causation. But at the end of the day, all of this violent rhetoric would certainly not want us to be cheerful to each other. What violent rhetoric? All of it, but for the purposes of this discussion and my blog (Because yes, you can go off-topic in off-topic), we'll be talking about the current anger exhibited by the Tea Party crowd in North America (Considering the fact that Canadians participate within these also, and Mexicans are indeed being targeted by *some* of the tea party crowds, it is important to get the whole continent involved in this). All of this angry rhetoric will surely evolve into violent mania, all of which could be prevented through cheerful and calm discourse, even with each other. Don't laugh at me, we can get along, I'm sure of it! If not with our opposites, at least with ourselves, yes even calm rational equal discourse with each other will produce a much healthier output for the rest of us. 
 
Why do I pick on the Tea Party crowd? Because it's not one group, but two. One of self-proclaimed libertarians (An affiliation that does not exist, you have to be a "Something-Libertarian") and the other is the obvious troll-worthy group. Am I being a jerk by saying I might troll them? Sorry, I'll stop that, starting now. Anyways, the anger is absolutely intense. Starting with the "libertarian" crowd, I've been shouted down in conversations with them multiple times. I'm not talking about the stuff with Suicrat, that's a different emotional status. I'm talking about stuff outside of the internet. But I've been shouted down by people. who share my beliefs on social issues because I said the government should take a more progressive stance on these issues. How dare I right? Apparently they take that as "The government should control free speech", and then proceed to call me a statist. I then argue that if the group in power that holds representation held explicit positions on issues, then people would be more likely to not be aching great cocks about these issues. They then call me a genius in a passive aggressive way, and then yell at me. Every, single, time. Forget how statist isn't even a word (Statism is though), but I've been yelled at very loudly by people who more or less hold the same positions that I do. Why do we not love each other? We would get along so well, and you wouldn't have to hate me for a reason that is incredibly stupid. How strange indeed, discourse was cut off because of one thing, one very stupid thing. This has happened multiple times. Sometimes I am shocked that it had not ended in violence (Thank god those libertarians are total pussies, sorry, I'll stop again). 
 
Now with that in mind, picture the tea parties. The angry tea parties. I mean the ones that will have you shit your pants in fear for the future. You know which ones, the crowds in which you can pick out the violent maniacs and the really stupid people, and the people who wish they were at another one with the libertarians right before they realized that they are just as stupidly pissed off. Let's simply say that violent rhetoric begets violence. I cannot believe that there haven't been more violent attacks recently. The amount of vilification from these parties is incredibly frightening. Let's go back to the murder of the census worker in Kentucky, let's never go back again. There's no doubt that the murderers were insane anarchists or other tea party people (Or militia men). Do I need to go on? The violent rhetoric surely without a doubt will spawn more terrorist violence across the continent.
 
All I'm saying is that we should start being nice to each other despite how angry we are. By the end of the day, we both leave learning something, instead of learning you hate another person. Just a suggestion, I'd rather end my debate with a foe with a shake of hands and a hug, rather than a fist in the face. 
 
ARTICLE OF THE DAY  
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Why hugs? Because hugs are awesome. Nothing speaks to comfort more than a hug... maybe a La-Z-Boy chair or sofa... but nothing else. Handshakes can still be aggressive, in a bad way. The understanding between people is merely businesslike, emotionally it is empty. That's why one should end a debate with a hug. Will people ever do that? Most likely not, but it is a thought. 
 
Oh yeah, Assassins Creed II is awesome. Cheers folks, until next time. This has been Snipzor wishing you a happy weekend. If you are reading this monday, you are too late. Sorry.

I might as well make a quick recommendation of a series of games I like. The Chzo Mythos series from that Zero Punctuation fellow, whatever his name is. Doesn't matter, because I personally find his reviews quite tiresome, feels like the current season of South Park. Disregarding that he currently has lost his flair for misanthropic reviewing (Proper misanthropic reviewing), the Chzo Mythos is a very good point and click series. Links below. 
 
5 Days a Stranger 
7 Days a Skeptic 
Trilby's Notes 
 
Yes, there are four games in the series, but the fourth is just completely shit and I ignore its existence entirely. For reasons that are spoilerrific, which I will post below. Let's just say that a character in the series is brought to expendable limits. Does it really matter, you won't even be playing the last one, so why should I care?!
 

I'll give you a quick summary, Omelas is a utopia, there is no poverty, no crime, no hatred, no famine, and everyone is intelligent, happy and wealthy (Universal wealth, don't think of money). This town is perfect in every single way. But under one condition, and one horrible condition that would dictate who lives there and who doesn't. There is a child, locked away in a basement. That child is abused (Physically and mentally), starving, mocked at by the denizens of this town. There is no light for this child to see, nothing but darkness and stink of his own entrails. This is understood by the people as soon as they come of age. One would think that people would leave at the notion of this, but all the people of the town come to terms of the metaphysical agreement, that this child's suffering would guarantee the utopian conditions of the town.
 
Now let's look at Guantanamo Bay, before we go anywhere, we must both accept that many of the people there have obviously committed the worst crimes horrible, but yet at the same time there is an alarmingly large number of people who have not yet had charges placed on them because they have not committed crime. Understanding that, it seems as if there is a segment of the population that fool themselves into believing that the torture of people (Guilty or innocent) would somehow make a utopia of their nation. Now I doubt that these people have ever read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", but they seem to understand the argument presented. Although something goes right through their minds. There are mass education gaps, mass unemployment, hunger, and poverty in their nation. They seem to believe all actions that go beyond the ones that torture dictate the attempt to destroy their utopia.
 
Absolutely something is wrong with these people, just as there is something wrong with the people of Omelas. If you can picture the problem with these people, I shall give you a cookie.
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I'm loving L4D2 by the way, I've been having trouble getting into the Scavenge mode, but the last few games I've played were so much fun. I suggest everyone here to stop playing MW2 right this moment, to pick up L4D2. Just a suggestion. 
 
Also note, writer's block sucks. I could not find a way to write anything over the past few weeks. Who to blame? Boring short stories for English class. Honestly, I don't give a crap about anything we read because it is Canadian fiction, wake me up when we go back to Margaret Atwood please. A gift which is far too few these days. Until next blog, I might actually give something worth reading if I still don't have writer's block. Until then.     

Just a quick list of movies I all want you to watch, top 10 of course. Mainly because: 
 
1) I haven't finished writing the follow-up. Stupid tests/essays to finish for this week. 
2) I'm still lazy, what can I say? 
3) These Ten Movies are really something 
 

• C.R.A.Z.Y.
• 12 Angry Men
• Les Triplettes De Belleville
• Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulin.
• The Big Lebowski
• Fargo
• Les Invasion Barbare
• One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
• A Clockwork Orange
• *I cannot stress this enough* 12 Angry Men

...here is your moment of zen. 
 
  

The following is an article posted on Destructoid by Anthony Burch, enjoy. 
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Last week, I recorded a rant in which I argued that gay characters have not been particularly well-represented in videogames. The subsequent discussion, while remarkably civil, included many variations of an argument I had not considered before: that explanations of sexual orientation of any kind should have no part in videogames to begin with.

"I don't know why a characters [sic] sexuality often even needs to be mentioned at all," commenterkefkaesque argued. "Sure everyone assumes Master Chief is straight because of how manly he is and because of the games he's in, but it's not like he ever goes around telling random characters HEY GUESS WHAT, I LIKE VAGINA."

While I can respect kefkaesque's point, I also completely disagree with it. Sexual orientation, especially in regard to narrative-driven games, is an important, honest, and useful aspect of characterization that can and should be explored whenever possible.

Firstly, I'm not arguing that every single video game character in existence needs to be clearly defined as either straight, gay, or bisexual. Some games simply do not focus on story or characterization, and thus don't really need to discuss human sexuality any more than they would the difficulties of getting a mortgage. I don't really need to know whom Pac-Man or Luigi or the pilot from Ikaruga sexually desire, because that's got absolutely nothing to do with my overall experience in those games (though it helps to know that Mario likes women because then I know why I'm trying to beat Bowser).

The sorts of characters I'm going to discuss here, and previously talked about in the Rev Rant, are those characters who exist in primarily narrative-driven games: games that, while providing entertaining, interactive situations, rely on a story of some sort to drive that gameplay forward. Games like Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid, Halo, Half-Life 2 -- you name it. These games include characters that we, as the player-slash-audience, are meant to partially understand and, ideally, care about.

Any creative writing instructor will tell you that in order to figure out who a person is and why the audience should care about them, we need to know what they want. What they wish to be, what sort of life they'd like to live. By seeing their desires, and then watching them act on those desires, we gain a greater understanding of who they are and are thus in a better position to give a shit about them.

And more often than not, that means finding out exactly what type of person they want to have sex with.

Not as a sole means of characterization, of course -- that's how you get shallow or stereotypical supporting female characters who exist only to fawn over the male lead, or vice versa -- but as one of many methods of examining a person from as many angles as possible. Sex isn't the only thing that matters in characterization, but it's pretty important. Every single person on the planet wants sex and love, and the specific types of sex and love they desire can tell us a lot about them.

This is why we like Nathan Drake. This is why we like Solid Snake. We don't define these guys solely by what they want to put their penises into, but it certainly helps our understanding of them. Nathan's dealings with Elena Fisher, especially in Uncharted 2, contextualize most of his actions -- we see how much he relies on her and how far he's willing to go for her sake, and the conversations he has with both her and Chloe are a heck of a lot more entertaining thanks to the sexual, quasi-flirtatious undertones. Same thing with Snake and Meryl in MGS1, as abrupt and awkwardly-handled as their love story was (though it did thankfully lead to a much more bittersweet, adult treatment of their relationship in MGS4).

This is also why I find it so difficult to care about Master Chief on a purely human level. Yes, I can admire what he represents to the story of the Halo universe and how cool his abilities are, but he never feels like a real person to me; his priorities are limited almost solely to stopping the baddies and saving the day, and I'm never allowed to see him in any other real context.

Not that this is an inherently bad thing. The whole minimalist characterization thing avoids all the pitfalls of having a character who wants or feels something the player does not (Prototype, inFamous). But it doesn't really work for Master Chief, who speaks with a voice which is not mine and says things I would not say, and who often appears in cut scenes doing things I would not do. He is a character -- he is not me -- and as such should feel like a believable human being.*

The funny thing is, I literally never heard the argument that sexual orientation should not be approached in videogames before doing my Rev Rant. I've never spoken to anyone who, upon finishing God of War, complained that Kratos was written as a heterosexual. I've never heard of anyone arguing that Cloud should have never had any romantic feelings of any sort for either Aeris or Tifa. Sexuality in games only becomes an issue that shouldn't be fully discussed when the sexuality in question differs from the norm, and that's disingenuous.

The characters I really, really care about, in videogames or otherwise, do not exist in a vaccuum. They want safety, freedom, happiness, victory, and, at the end of the day, an orgasm. It's not outright impossible to craft an interesting character without approaching their sexuality (if I remember correctly, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil never shows an inclination in one direction or the other), but why ignore a simple, universal aspect of the human condition?

*The whole minimalist characterization things almost only works in first-person games like Half-Life, where the player effectively is the protagonist, or third-person games like Shadow of the Colossus, which has such a minimalist story that you may as well be making up Wander's character as you go along.

Though even as I say that, I realize that both of these non-characters still have potentially sexual dimensions; the way Alyx Vance relates to Gordon, it is very difficult not to see some sort of romantic chemistry between the two, just as it's hard to imagine that Wander wasn't so in love with Whatsherface that he's willing to kill 16 giants to resurrect her.

But enough about that, hurray for tele! Woo Yeah! 
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Could the bill have been a bit better? Hell yeah, and I won't even bother in simply saying "Single Payer", because that's too obvious. No, I would have liked it if they introduced a certain measure that would remove the whole state lines issue with insurance, as well as the removal of the "You Must Buy Insurance" clause. I would have also loved it had they not voted for an Anti-Abortion bill during this time, one that somehow got through the liberals... oh wait I keep forgetting there are no liberals. 
 
But the biggest story to this is the opposition. Yes the opposition to this bill. They demanded compromise, completely forgetting that scrapping the single payer notion is the compromise they whined for. They also demanded ridiculous shit that doesn't actually work that way in the house of representatives, then again I shouldn't be shocked that they completely forgot the rules. Yes, for the past few months, republicans and blue dogs have been literally dragging their feet (With exception of one republican who will be talked about soon) the whole way through, and who can blame them with the cash they made over the past few months. With contributions like that, you've got to be representing, even though it might make you look like a twat (Although I'm still wondering how Herb Kohl received -$50 in contributions, did he have dinner with lobbyists and was stuck with the bill?! Also note RON PAUL got a tidy sum himself, what a cast iron libertarian). 
 
What comes with this news of course? The news that one New Orleans representative voted for the bill. I'm quite glad he had the courage to do this, it isn't easy to stand up against party ideology especially when the party's unfortunate vocal presence is this group (Click, if you dare, seriously that stuff with make you as misanthropic as one can get). The question is, will he buckle? Yeah... I don't think so. But I would imagine if he is scared to fall asleep at night. 
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In other news, reports from the Fort Hood shooting are in, and when I say "are in" and "reports", I mean a bunch of bigoted idiots give their worthless opinions on the matter. 
 
Yeah it seems as if the name really pissed off certain people to no end. People are off claiming that this was a "terrorist act". By terrorist act, they mean al Qaeda, because all Muslims are part of al Qaeda despite the fact that it is a blatant bigoted statement, and people are horrible for even bothering with that thought. Was it a terrorist act? I don't know, in fact, I don't want to know until reports come in from the military. Why should I offer my opinion? My opinion is about as invalid as the JAG officer's was when he went on CNN to describe how this is an Islamic based attack and we should have no more Muslims in the military (On a lighter note, this is the same guy who discounted a woman for not knowing anything in the military or on PTSD despite having been a POW who was shot at, as well as someone who suffers from PTSD, so shut the fark up whomever you are, your opinion is even more invalid). The point is, I'll let the experts talk it out. I'm not an expert, so I can only talk about it without pretending I know much about it (despite doing that with just about everything I've ever talked about). 
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Finally Newsbusters are still going after an episode of Sesame Street for being liberal propaganda. Do I need to say anything else? Here's the link. 
 
Although I shouldn't be shocked from a website that tries to copy the Daily Show in its online show (Which sucks) and whose third top story is Ronald Reagan. Nevermind that the episode is from September, doesn't matter to Newsbusters. 
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That's all for today, Happy Birthday Carl Sagan, Rest In Peace. We salute you. Until next time, until then.

For the past few months, I've lacked the ability to sleep, I mean it. I could not sleep for more than 5 hours. Luckily, I'm back in action, with my sleeps backing me up, I'm ready to kick some ass again! Huzzah! 
 
Our agenda consists of three things. 
---------------------------------------------------- 
1) I'm pursuing media studies then going off into journalism, thanks for the support you guys! 
 
I have been getting a portfolio ready for a while, but now I'm totally venturing towards that path. Get ready everyone, Snipzor is coming for you! If you want to blame someone, blame the support I got from the three responders. Only them, it isn't my fault. I was unsure of it anyways. 
 
2) A simple question gang. Why is it that sex and sexuality (in general) is so conversation worthy despite my own lack of experience of knowledge on the subject? I expect an answer from each of you, on my desk. 
 
3) Finally, for the last bit on the agenda. Monday will be a special day. Carl Sagan's birthday, he would be 75. Rest in Peace Mr Sagan, if it weren't for you, millions around the world would know nothing of how cool science is. 
  

I've decided that psychology is simply a bridge too far in certain aspects, so I will be changing my focus to media studies, to be exact; Journalism .  
 
But I first want to know one thing, should I go for it? I need the support of everyone here, including you, yes you. I usually don't take chances in my life so this is foreign territory for me. Should I, Snipzor Delarosa (Not real name), enter the field of journalism after being torn to pieces by psychology? Change my discipline after 2 years of abject failure? I need your help here. 
 
To help you concentrate, think over this wonderful piece of music. 
  

Let it be known that I have watched every episode of the new season, and it is shit. It is literally garbage, and know what, this is the episode that is neither funny or clever in anyway. Never have I seen the show suck so hard before, and I'm a huge fan. 
 
The episode revolves around a biker gang coming to South Park and annoying the living hell out of all of the townspeople. The episode actually starts when Cartman goes to tell them that they are being fags. The show doesn't get better from there, in fact it has used the same defenses I've heard and once used myself (When I was stupid) and they give it even less justice. From there, the gang go on to try to make the word "Fag" be all about disruptive Harley bikers, and they succeed. They start by spraypainting "Fags get out" on a nearby block of buildings, then admit to it gladly in court. Now if there has been a single theme in the show of late, it has been the warping of characters from one place to another in seconds, but the destination being even more unbelievable. With the help of Mr Slave and Big Gay Al, they manage to put into law an indefinite changing of meanings of the word fag to mean the disruptive bikers. Then by the end of the episode, they change the meaning of the word by changing the dictionary's definition. 
 
By that point I thought, "Fuck it, they're going nowhere with it". A terribly written episode with an even worse lesson behind it. It doesn't work when you have the main characters call other people "gay" on a sentence to sentence basis. Give me a break, this preachy bullshit doesn't hold up. Especially when the social meaning of the word fag has meant what it meant for a long time (As in a near century). You can't make the case that the meaning has changed because kids have a supposedly bullshit different popular usage for it, it doesn't work that way. I mean, the god damn timing of this is just great. Coinciding with the MW2 video, the recent election in Maine, and the not so recent but still ingrained in our memories the brutal assault of a gay man by two guys who repeatedly called him a fag. 
 
Lately, there has been a trade-off. Matt Stone and Trey Parker have decided to scrap witty writing with kids swearing constantly, and it doesn't make for good television. There are two south park shows, one that is a comedy show and the other that is a preachy right-wing libertarian plug that fails to get off a laugh. When there is a message, the show opens itself up to scrutiny because it isn't satire (But rather satire with a really bad message). I just think that they could go back to their old way of doing the show. 
 
Somebody should tell all of these people how language works. 
 
3/10