03.29.09
156
No, this is not my 156th post. I’m far from that.
I don’t weigh 156 pounds. I’m far from that too.
So, what is 156? Aside from the integer following 155 and preceding 157, that is.
It’s how many shirts I own.
Let that sink in.
156. I’m also not factoring in my dress shirts or any shirts I have which are awaiting me to sew a button back on or something like that. These are shirts ready to wear and which I would be willing to wear to school tomorrow.
156. That’s a lot. A freaking lot. The overwhelming majority of these are also not ones I bought. Most are hand-me-downs from siblings or my dad, gifts from people, or shirts that my mom and Wendee would get me when I was in high school (when I never bought my own shirts and rarely went shopping for any).
The funny thing is, while I was going through these shirts, I could remember exactly where and at what point in my life I aquired these shirts. Talk about useless memories.
Let me show you what these shirts look like in photo format. First, the pile of hangers on which these hung until recently:
That’s a lot of hangers. It wasn’t until all were thrown into this pile that I realized it wouldn’t be the most fun hour of my life to untangle them all. Alas, that’s what comes from poor planning.
I separated the shirts into two piles. The first pile, containing the majority of them, is the pile which I will need to sort out and decide what I want to get rid of for good and what I want to pack up for future use. The second pile is the shirts which I want to keep around me so I can wear them whenever. Here’s the first pile, consisting of 123 shirts:
Now for the second pile of 32 shirts:
Those two numbers of 123 and 32 only add up to 155, so let me show you the elite of the elite, the shirt which is in a pile of its own and of which I will keep in as excellent condition as I can:
This shirt was a preorder bonus from Software Etc when The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was coming out. I have never seen another of these shirts in my life. I love it. It was this game that put the concept into my head that indeed, I was a gamer. This shirt has a special place in my heart. Yes, a shirt. Link is just so bad-A.
This shirt is from my “club” phase, when I thought flashier = better. I refer to it as my Mithral Mail +4 shirt:
Just a note about this shirt. Because I was such a nerd and compare this shirt to magical enchanted armor, when I would wear my Link shirt I felt I needed some extra protection. As that protection I would wear my Mithral Mail. .. +4.
This shirt I won the night I went to see Mission: Impossible 2. One of the managers of the theater came in before the showing and was asking questions and handing out prizes. The last question he asked was “What is the best seat in town?” I was sitting at the very top of the theater and raised my hand before he was even done, and at the same time as Steve Hansen who was sitting next to me. Being the two quickest hands in the theater, the manager saw us and pointed up and yelled “Fro!” I answered “Cinemark!” and got the shirt. That was the very first afro I grew and it won me a shirt. Win.
This next shirt was one of my prizes for spending 10 days of my life outside the Megaplex 12 at the Gateway while awaiting the release of Star Wars Episode II:
This shirt is a remnant of my days at Bingham High. In my junior year, my friends and I attended the football games at home. We got WAY into rooting for Bingham. Not because we had school spirit, but because we liked making fun of the opposing teams. I have a couple funny stories to tell about that, another time though. I made this shirt out of the school shirts for my junior and sophmore years. The jocks and cheerleaders all loved it when I wore it.
Well, those are some of my shirts. It’s sort of fun to be downsizing my wardrobe. Oh, and this is what those shirts look like in a pile and not stacked on top of one another nicely:
So many shirts!
02.23.09
Zombies in Space
It’s coming up on the time when I’ll be going to sleep (I’m already in bed. Laptops are cool.) And sitting here like the family which used to live on Wheeler Farm* I was thinking about what was in my mind this morning when I woke up in this very bed.
Last night I had three fairly vivid and fairly awesome dreams. One of them was of an episode of 30 Rock in which many years ago Jack encapsulated the former CEO of NBC as well as the CEO’s lawyer in two boxes, then somehow managed to displace the boxes from time. After reappearing in our present day, the task of covering up the seriousness of the situation fell to Liz Lemon. Needless to say, while Liz was trying to downplay what happened, hilarity ensued.
The dream that I really enjoyed, though, took place far in the future as humanity was colonizing the universe. My dream centered on the events of one ship that had stopped near a planet to refuel the engines. A scout ship was sent to the planet’s surface to gather the fuel only to find that the entire planet had become overrun with undead. Oh no! Of all the things to find on a foreign planet.
Because the fuel was necessary to leave the system, the scout ship couldn’t return to the cruiser in orbit empty handed. That led to only one option and it’s the only option anyone ever has when you need something and the walking dead stand moaning unceasingly in your way. Bust some skulls.
Being the future, better weapons were available that exceeded the now-a-days solutions such as an axe and shotgun. Don’t get me wrong, those are tried and true weapons for cutting mighty swathes through undead, but you can’t tell me that you’d take such primitive means of destruction when at the same time you’re being offered a repeating laser rifle.
Unfortunately for our characters, as valiant an effort as they put up, they were eventually overwhelmed and could not gather the needed fuel. After all, they were trying to stop the tide of a whole planet. This is where things took a turn for the worse.
After running some calculations, the cruiser’s artificial intelligence program concluded that the only viable course to take was to self destruct the cruiser after uploading a computer virus to the scout ship which would force it to return to the planet’s surface.
I woke up just after one of the soldiers on the ground found a hiding place and was gripping his rifle tightly to his chest, listening for the moans which were growing louder.
I think the moral of the story is to not let planet’s become overrun with the walking dead. That’s got “bad idea” written all over it.
02.01.09
Looking at the Future
Over this weekend a friend of mine, and possibly yours, Nathan Wong, came down from Logan for a visit. Among various topics of discussion and activities Wong made the point of how he didn’t feel there was much to look forward with anticipation toward. I must say that I understand how Wong feels, but I do disagree.
Naturally, this is simply my view so anything I say would apply specifically to me and might not be anything everyone else gets excited about. With all that in mind, let me tell you about some things I am looking forward to with great interest. These will not be in any particular order except for the order that they pop into my mind after having completed the prior point.
1) Next week’s Battlestar Galactica. This statement could work for any week in which the next week has an episode of BSG airing. This is even more potent for what happened last Friday. I won’t spoil any plot for those unaware, but it has been a long time since I watched a TV show or movie where I felt uncontrollable urges to shout in amazement at what was happening on screen. This episode had several moments when such yelling occurred and I can only assume next week will be even better.
2) Summer vacation. While my summer will not be entirely free of responsibility, it will certainly be very enjoyable to have some of my current tasks reduced. I recognize that in a career such vacations are not given, but I’m not in a career right now so I will take what I can. Being in school I can’t afford myself the time to do anything I want when I want without sacrificing a potentially higher grade and, more importantly, a comprehension of the course material. Extended time off will be greatly appreciated.
3) Getting out of school. As mentioned above, a career will reduce my available free time between semesters, since there will be no semester, but there’s an obvious perk to being out of school and in a career: money. Ah yes, money. It’d be a good thing to be racking in the money rather than racking up the student loans. Add into this the relative ease in locating a job, even in this declining economy, and compensation for a computer science degree and the money sounds even better. I don’t want to be really rich or anything, but a comfortable amount would be, well, comfortable.
4) Inevitable surprises. This option is quite broad and without any control. It still holds importance, though. Think of all the times in your life that something unexpected happened. Even if you might have known in some degree how it would turn out. Case in point: Iron Man. That movie had to have been the biggest surprise of last year. I enjoyed The Dark Knight much more, but I was expecting it to be awesome. I had no idea Iron Man would be anywhere near as great as it would be. It is easily one of my favorite comic book movies now, and a great movie at that. There are more surprises like this in store and even though I don’t know when they will come or what they will be, I look forward to them all the same.
5) One day finishing my book. I spend an overwhelming amount of my free time thinking about various things. Of that time an overwhelming amount is spent on one particular subject. That subject is the story I began many years ago. Every once in a while I pick it back up and work on it, but never in a consistent way to get it done. I try to justify the delay to myself by saying that I am working out the core details of the plot for the whole series in such a way that once I do begin working on it in a dedicated manner, I will be able to move through it rather seamlessly. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. I’ll just have to start writing and figure it out. But I do anticipate the day that some of you reading this will be able to read my book(s), and hopefully you will enjoy being able to be a part of them as much as I have.
Again, that’s not the entire list, just a sample. It’s not in ascending or descending order. There’s a lot to look forward to.
01.25.09
A Non-Negative View of Humanity
It occurred to me this fine Sunday that a lot of my posts to the world are of a typically negative demeanor, especially my last one of berating the denizens of the internet. I’m not a pessimist, quite the opposite actually. I hope for the best in nearly every regard and situation. I admit that I am a cynic though. I don’t like to take experiences and situations at face value. There’s something more to what’s going on all the time. I contend that such a view is actually quite optimistic, if in a roundabout way.
I believe that things happen for a very real reason, though we don’t often know why. I don’t mean this in a drug-induced cosmic-binding idea of fate or karma, just that the choices we all make result in connections to others in far deeper ways than we realize and I’m optimistic that we can find a way to use that. Let me try to clear some of this up by saying that if I act pessimistic it’s not intentional. If I were to say that the glass in front of me is half empty, it’s only because I’m optimistic that I can finish that remaining half of my drink.
In light of happier posts I wanted to share a series of pictures with you. They were taken some time ago, almost a year. I just never got around to doing anything with them. For your viewing pleasure I am letting you see the making of a fine curry dish. I loves my curry. It all starts with a mess on the counter like this:
Not pictured is the giant stock pot used to contain it all. That looks like this:
I’m browning some garlic in canola oil. Everything needs a little garlic in it so why not start with it? After the garlic has had its share of the heat I add the cut up onion and some peanuts.
Let that heat up and start to play together.
This picture is after the curry paste and stock have been added. While I let that heat up to a boil it’s time to turn to the meat portion of the meal which for this particular instance of curry was shrimp and soybean protien. If you’ve never been to Evergreen in Salt Lake City this is what I’m talking about:
This little ball of a mess is pretty much what is left of soybeans after they have been pressed for oil. Basically it’s a lump of protien, and quite delicious. I used to drive into Evergreen all the time just to order the number 7 for these. Then I found out they sold them in huge bags. I need to head up there sometime soon and pick up another bag. Also, rumor has it the number 7 has changed a bit.. an investigation will need to be done.
When the meat has had time to cook and soak up some of the curry it’s time to add the veggies. This time around it consisted of potatoes, carrots, and corn. Yes, corn. Super sweet white corn to be precise.
That picture is somewhat deceiving. I didn’t add a mountain of corn, it’s sitting on top of the more abundant carrots and potatoes. Stir that up and let it cook together for a half hour or so and it starts to look like this:
One more thing to add though to make it nice and creamy (and frightfully less healthy); coconut milk.
Now it’s pretty much ready to eat. Of course, the longer you let it all stew together the more the flavors saturate and get absorbed into each individual component. I typically let it cook from this point on low for about an hour and a half to two hours. If I had a crock pot I’d cook such curries all day.
Once you decide it’s had enough time, cook up some rice and plop the two together in a bowl.
You can see a little hole in the curry down to the brown rice. I tend to go through phases where I prefer brown rice over white. Regardless of which kind of rice you choose, you should get the same result:
Mmm, mmm, good.
Curry is a pretty simple dish. You’d have to try to mess it up, and even then it’d be sort of hard. If you’ll notice, I didn’t indicate any measurements of the ingredients. That’s because I don’t use any. Like I said, it’s a pretty simple dish. I got the recipe from Patrick Wong and after a couple times of making it his way I picked up the ball and ran with it.
I recommend to everyone (who likes curry, and with many different kinds everyone should like at least one) that they should try making their own. It’s easy, fun, and so much cheaper than going out to eat. Now if you’ll excuse me, I actually have another curry on my stove right now.
01.24.09
I’m Surrounded by Idiots
I want to first acknowledge the possibility that this post and all other posts/statements/arguments/anything else I have said in the course of my life could fit the mold of what I am about to rant about. That being said, I would like to think that all such comments made by me were either sufficiently backed up with some form (a flawed form is still a form) of reasoning where another person who either agreed or disagreed could at least say something akin to “You’re wrong and an idiot yourself, Neal, but I can at least see how you got to that erroneous conclusion.”
Why am I making the point to clear this with you, you might be asking right now. Because I am about to make one of the most profound statements that we as a civilization of human beings could ever realize even though most everyone has already stated it themselves, myself included. It’s still a statement that warrants saying though, such as a warning that something is hot and best not be touched. It’s a voice of warning for all others who for a split second may have forgotten.
This profound voice of warning is this: the internet is full of morons.
There is a reason which has recently reaffirmed my stance on this. Allow me to share it with you.
The other day I was reading a post made on Wes and Sandy’s blog. It was one posted by Sandy about some recipes they had tried and enjoyed. One of the recipes was for a butter nut lasagna which sounded particularly interesting since: 1) I find lasagna to be a marvelous dish; 2) it’s a vegetarian lasagna (if you recall I have been veering away from red meat and even meat in general of late); 3) I enjoy the taste of butter nut squash; and 4) I happen to have a large butter nut squash sitting on my cold kitchen floor right now.
I looked over the recipe and thought to myself, “Yes, this looks good. I wonder what others have said about it” and foolishly clicked on the comments made. The top comment is the one that caught me off guard with its low score and explanation. In short, it related the story of this person removing the cream from the recipe to make the meal more healthy, after which they were disappointed with how dry the dish was, and then proceeded to direct readers to another lasagna recipe which they classified as being even less healthy.
Perhaps you can follow my dismay at this comment by my paraphrasing of it. If not, allow me to walk you through why I wanted to slap this individual and their faulty thought processes. This person wanted to make the recipe a little more healthy by not using the fatty cream which the ingredients call for. Fair enough. However, cream adds more than fat to recipes and one of those things it adds is moisture. He/she must have not recognized this as he/she did not choose to provide a replacement for this ingredient, or at least failed to mention it. This lack of moisture in the dish as it baked resulted in the lasagna being more dry than they would have preferred.
This is the beginning of where I was so dumbfounded. They, by their obvious and deliberate choice removed the cream from the recipe. Yet this person faulted the recipe for being dry. They did not score themselves low, they scored the recipe low. That is enough to make me wonder what they were thinking, but they immediately proceeded to tell people not to make this recipe but to instead look for another particular recipe on the website which they admitted to be far less healthy.
What?! You ruined this recipe yourself to make it more healthy than it called for and faulted it, but yet you are directing other people to another recipe which you are clearly saying is even less healthy? How does that make any sense? I wanted to reach into my monitor, grasp this person firmly on the shoulders, and shake them while saying “YOU are the one that ruined this recipe to make it more healthy! It is YOUR fault that it turned out to be dry! And now YOU are the one telling others not to use this recipe but another one that goes even more against the reason why YOU changed this recipe in the first place!” Then I would have slapped them across the face and left them alone to wallow in their own stupidity while I marveled at how I had reached through a monitor to someone else.
If you take nothing from this story but a slight smile at the idiocy of this person then I’m glad for that. If you want to take something else with you, take this piece of advice:
Watch yourselves out there. The internets are filled with the social rejects of our day which hide behind anonymous User IDs while they spout illogical rhetoric and bigoted remarks. They are not to be trusted.
If I could, I would transfer myself to their computers andhave a battle royale amid their circuitry as the Superhuman Samurai Cyber Squad would do.
12.31.08
2008, I hardly knew ye
2008 has come and (very nearly) gone. That notion has caught me fairly off guard. It seems like just a couple weeks ago I ushered in this year with a night much like any other night with my friends; playing games and watching movies. Unlike these other nights, though, there was a much larger variety of food and at one point we celebrated counting backwards to zero. Huzzah.
I have somewhat mixed feelings about New Years. On the one hand it’s terrific fun to get together with others. But on the other it’s just the turn of a dial and the placing of a new calender on the fridge or wall.
I’m also not a fan of New Years resolutions. It seems to me that if you are able to identify a characteristic or trait about yourself that you are interested in changing that you should alter that problem right away rather than waiting until a somewhat arbitrary day. Add onto this the generally accepted idea that most resolutions don’t last more than a couple months if they even last a couple weeks.
The one good thing I can think of which comes from such resolutions is that it becomes a moment when many people take an introspective look at themselves. That’s a behaviour I can’t condemn. It is always good for people to take a look within and assess the situation of their life. Otherwise we’d all be like cats. As cute and lovable as cats are, all they do is eat, sleep, expel what they ate onto the floor, and sleep some more. There’s a distinctive lack of evaluating their lives.
Or maybe they do assess their lives all the time and they have concluded that their situation is as good as it gets. Those cats. So devious.
12.16.08
I’m Done Son!
I thought today would never come and end. Alas, it has, and now is the time for me to get busy doing nothing. For those that don’t know, this week is finals week at BYU. Yes, generally speaking a week later than all you chaps out there. But keep in mind, BYU’s summer was a week longer as well. Time’s gotta be made up somehow.
I’m super excited because this semester has now passed me by. And what a semester it was. Not overly difficult, but difficult to some measure. So, after having completed four finals today I would like to share some insights that I learned these past couple months that I bet you all know anyway.
1) It’s easier to stay caught up than it is to catch up. It’s almost like I have to learn this fact on a yearly basis. You’d think I’d be able to apply it. It’s just that Futurama or some other such show is just so tempting to sit down and watch once I get home from school. Now that I’ve changed majors this will definitely have to change since long, complex math equations can’t be solved adequately in a matter of minutes.
2) My brain is not equipped for cram sessions. This works pretty well with the prior point. I’ve come to realize that in order for me to be able to recall information it needs about three days to soak in. Once it’s in there though, it’s as good as gold. Brain gold. My art history class was the bane of my existence this semester for this very reason. I’d procrastinate studying for the tests until it was too late and many hours spent in the morning before a test didn’t prove to help. Sure enough, though, two days after the test I couldn’t get the name Loacoon Group out of my head.
3) Orem isn’t as far away as I originally thought. I remember coming down here now and then over my life and always thinking “Gee, this place is far away.” Turns out it isn’t. It’s only a few miles further than Lehi, which as it turns out is also not very far from Riverton as well. As long as gas prices stay low I will definitely plan to come up to the valley of salt to spend more time with some chaps. Sorry Wong, while Logan isn’t forever away, it’s not THAT close.
4) No matter how convinced I am in the morning that I can stay in bed and not fall asleep, I’m wrong. Throughout the entire course of my life I have probably woken up in the wee hours of the morning and laid in bed without falling asleep again only a handful of times. I’ve been trying to wake up earlier this semester to get things done in the morning but that hasn’t worked out very well. I swear, it’s in the blink of the eyes that five more minutes turns into two more hours.
I think I’ll do one more, but leave it up to you. What do you think I should have learned this semester?
5)
12.01.08
Even I Can Be Mayor
My last post about video games and the realization that I haven’t played any of those games (outside of Rock Band and Guitar Hero) made a part of me sad. I think it the index toe of my right foot (going by corresponding finger association here since I’m not sure if toes have alternate identifiers (although “ring toe” really can’t be correct)).
After this impulse traversed the empty expanse of my nervous system from the before mentioned toe all the way to my brain and I pondered it a moment, I ended up doing what all sane men do after such toe-riffic thoughts: I played a game. I’ve actually played three games since then. One of them I have decided that I can’t play while in school and once out of school I can’t play it when I’m married and have a family (if I don’t have such responsibilities by the time I exit my schooling) because it’s just too much of a time suck. Possibly the worst I’ve ever experienced.
It’s an immensely entertaining game. It requires a great deal of thought to get set up in, and once it gets going you tend to snow-ball into victory if you get things right in the beginning. I enjoy it a great deal, but like I said, time disappears into this game like you would not believe. On a Friday night I went out with Alex and Sheree and decided that Saturday I would head up to Salt Lake and spend some time with them in their neck of the woods. At noon I sat down to play this game and was cruising along in my own little world. Eight hours later (I kid you not) I looked at my phone to see the time. “Well, so much for spending the evening in Salt Lake.” It wasn’t a complete waste though, I did win the game.
No more of that. I need something more manageable. Something that could fill the gaps in my everyday affairs rather than replace those everyday affairs. Ah, my DS. It can travel with me and when I have even just a couple minutes I can pull it out and get to work on some adventure. I have a fair number of DS and Gameboy Advance (which the DS plays) games that I haven’t beat yet so that works. Last night I beat the first Fire Emblem. I’d explain the premise to you, but it’s a Tactical Role-Playing Game and people don’t play those for the stories. They get played for the tactics and I can’t adequately explain that in a paragraph or too.
I now come to the third game I have played of late: Sim City 4. I remember playing the first Sim City on some horrible school computer. I was no good. No good at all. I tried it on the Super Nintendo and I was even worse at that one. I left the second installment alone and tried 3. I could get started, but my city would collapse financially after a short time. My ability to govern seemed to be minimal. Then Wong built a computer and bought Sim City 4. As life would have it, at this time in mine and Wong’s lives we were pretty much the only ones left in Riverton of our friends. Most others were on missions or away to school. This left Wong and myself with plenty of time hanging out at each other’s places doing whatever. And one of those whatevers was Sim City 4. If one of us was not playing Sim City 4 the other one usually was.
It took some time and some discussing of strategy between the two of us, but we got to the point where we could build somewhat stable cities and let them grow, but only to a point. We never could really get past a certain threshold. Then one day as I was playing it all started to click together in my head. I began to understand and one of my cities surpassed that threshold. Not for long. It began to fall apart, but it made sense to me why it didn’t work now.
Not long after this Wong left on his mission, leaving me with all that time by myself. Luckily Wong lent me his Sim City 4 and I filled some of that empty time with building cities. Over time I got better at it. A LOT better. It all made sense to me and I was loving it. I far surpassed my prior notions of what I could accomplish in the game and developed a region that I was proud of. Alas, that region has been lost to me and I have begun again. Some of the knowledge I once had has also fled, but as I’ve picked Sim City back up it has slowly been coming back. And so I come to this invitation of sorts. Over the next.. however long I keep playing this game I guess, I will periodically update you one what is happening. First, let me show you the region I will be building in.
What you’re looking at is a default region called “San Francisco.” (Building your own regions with water and mountains like this is grotesquely un-fun.) Each of these rectangles is a possible city to be built. At the bottom middle of the image you can see two cities I have already started. The first one I did was “City of Disease.” It’s not doing so well. I’ve balanced the economy but it’s not growing anymore and I’ve moved on. The second city is “Contagion City.” I started that one today and spent a little time on it. This is what it looked like when I first laid out the plans:
The green is residential; blue is commercial; yellow is industrial. In the center of the city I have a high school, elementary school, hospital, police station, and fire station. On the right is my little wind generator farm for power along with the water pump (which you can’t see really) and the landfill (the brown area). I set this up with the middle circle of empty plots to be filled with future civic buildings when they come along and a ring between the residences and commercial plots for expansion as needed. So I clicked the fast button and let things fly. With some careful micro-managing of the schools and hospital, after five years I ended up with this:
It’s coming along. You might notice that the landfill has been put to use, there are a couple more wind generators, and both the elementary and high schools have been replaced (with bigger versions of themselves which are just better). I’ve also added some commerical and residential plots into the dividing ring where appropriate. I let things go and kept on micro-managing and got this after fifteen years:
There are many more wind generators, the city has begun to build upwards with taller buildings, and I have added a college behind the hospital and some other little things like a private school, a couple churches, a cemetary, and if you look right next to the high school is the mayor’s house. Yay.
That’s that. Or at least that’s where I stopped for today. If you think this might be fun to follow along with then pay attention for future Sim City posts. If you don’t like it, then move along home.
11.17.08
The Effect of Mass Effect
I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. Quite some time actually. There are more current events that I could be writing about; such as what’s been happening with the Church, or seeing Quantum of Solace (and loving it), or even this girl I sit next to in a class and have done so most days of the semester and until last week we have only so much as said “Bless you” after the other sneezes and “Thank you” when the other says the before mentioned “Bless you.”
But that’s not what I want to write about. Instead I want to tell you about a single moment and what happened after that moment. Almost one year ago (November 20 of 2007) a game released called Mass Effect. I had been looking forward to this game for a long time. So much so that I pre-ordered the special edition of it without owning the system necessary to play it. I wanted to have the game in preparation for the time that I would have the means to play it. As luck would have it, a few weeks after I got it I had a change of heart concerning the massive collection of games that I had sitting on a shelf at about the same time Game Stop ran a couple promotions that I wanted to take advantage of. To make a short story a little shorter, I traded in over one hundred video games and netted almost a thousand dollars in credit. Nice. With that credit I purchased the necessary means to play the anticipated game of which I now write.
Some of you now reading this have played and beat the game. Of those who have, I have talked about in some way this moment and hopefully this will rekindle the love you had for it if that love has dwindled in the past year. For those of you who haven’t played it, or don’t even play games at all, don’t worry. That’s not required and I’ll explain all you need to know.
Mass Effect takes place a few centuries from now in a future where humanity has begun moving out into the galaxy. We’ve met alien races and we exist together with them. Some of them we are good friends with and some of them we are at odds with (in humanity’s first encounter with one of these alien races we got into a fight and that memory hasn’t left a lot of people’s minds).
Throughout the game you are trying to track down this individual which has turned rogue against the galactic government. All this while you are slowly piecing together a much larger puzzle. You get a little piece here and there and start to understand what is happening, but it’s not very clear. Like looking through a muddy stained-glass window that you put together with duct tape. Also, you don’t have a light to put behind this mess of a window to actually see the colors. You just don’t really have a picture of what is really going on.
Towards the end of the game you do realize that this rogue agent is trying to bring about the end of all life. Not not sure how that’s going to happen, but anyone can tell you that ending all life is not a good thing. After busting your way out of confinement by your leaders you head after this agent onto an unexplored planet. On this planet you come across an ancient and alien device which explains everything. It takes those muddied window pieces, cleans them up, and puts them into the proper places for you.
This was it for me. As I realized what was being said and what was going to happen, the personification of the game character in my head muttered the words “Oh shit” while in the physical world I sat on my futon at two in the morning and said “Awesome.”
It just got real.
After ending the conversation with this device you continue the chase of the rogue agent. I don’t want to go into full detail for anyone that may yet enjoy the experience as it unfolds, but I will tell you how I felt. Everything in the game was building up to this moment when you recognized what was happening. There was only one thing that could stand in the way of utter annihilation. That one thing was you.
As the fight to stop the seemingly inevitable progressed I couldn’t put down my controller. I was completely lost in the fantasy being unfolded before me. I was not in that cramped little room any longer. I was in John Shepard’s armor suit as he ran along the outside of the Citadel in deep space shooting Geth at all turns.
I was John Shepard.
Intermittently through the fighting the game would cut away to depict what was happening elsewhere. A fleet of enemy ships had arrived and the allied fleet was losing the battle. I began to worry that they wouldn’t make it. I actually despaired at what was happening. It seemed that no matter how much I tried, this battle would not swing in my favor.
That all dissipated when a fleet of humanity’s warships arrived as reinforcements. A race that no one fully trusted and was looked down upon had shown up when needed. Despite the other races’ contempt for us it would be humanity that would turn the tide.
I don’t want to ruin everything so I’ll stop there. As the game end approached music began to accent what was happening. This music was a song that played through the entire credits to which I sat in silence listening to.
I’ve been asked by some people why I play games. It’s difficult to answer that. I enjoy the fiction and the challenge they present. I enjoy the themes which some games offer. I enjoy the time of recreation where I can sit and relax. These are all valid reasons to me to play video games. But they aren’t the reason.
As I sat on that futon in a dark room, listening to the music, it hit me. A feeling that comes only rarely after completing a game. The satisfaction of having gone through that trial of hope and despair and being a part of it all. It was a moment of retrospection.
That must sound odd to those of you that don’t play video games. But to those of you that do, it makes perfect sense. I don’t mean to say that all games do this. It is remarkably rare. I could count the number of times it has happened. That rarity only intensifies the moment though, it does not lessen it.
I have played a game that has no dialogue that made me cry. I’ve sat with my hand covering my open mouth in amazement at what I had just witnessed. I’ve thrown controllers into pillows as hard as I could in anger and frustration (I’m rational enough to know it won’t break on a pillow). I’ve jumped up from my seat in triumph and shouted exuberantly. I’ve struggled side-by-side battles with friends in battles that I felt could not possibly be won that together we proved not to be the case. I’ve played a game that overworked and heightened my senses so much that I jumped around and almost attacked the toaster when the toast popped up.
I play video games because of these moments when it becomes something more than a video game. It becomes real. It becomes emotion. And it drives the player to do more. Sadly many people don’t get these moments. They experience them and move on. They don’t take them for what they can be and only change discs when they have beat a game.
Another sad truth is that I haven’t been able to play these games of late. I’ve been busy with more important matters. But in the times that I have free where I can stop and think, my mind sometimes recalls these moments and I smile.
I play video games because some of them are more than video games. Sometimes they are experiences.
11.06.08
Digital Baby! Everything’s Going Digital!
I want to start this post with a little information that some out there might be sensitive towards. Namely, the current state of affairs regarding the flack that the LDS Church is taking. A part of me supports people in the choices they make, whatever they may be. I might not agree with them but I recognize that everyone has the right to choose. So when the question came up of why I should care if same gender couples are allowed to marry I was left with little to answer.
In my American Heritage class we spent about ten minutes going over some basics about the Church’s stance, but ten minutes is hardly enough time to learn about such a complex issue. I asked Professor Holland (Elder Holland’s son) if he could direct me to some more information about the topic and he did. I’ve since read up on the position and potential consequences. I don’t consider myself an expert by any means, but if you find yourself without an answer to the question “What would it do to you?” then I strongly recommend you follow these links.
This first one is the Church’s official stance. It gets into the issue more than you might have known before:
This next link is to a forum address given at BYU the last week of October. I listened to it for the first time yesterday and was pretty blown away by it. It’s an hour long, but a fantastic listen. The speaker is a professor from Princeton and while the details get into some deeper philosophical realms, you should still listen.
I leave it to you now, but you really should understand what exactly the big deal is and why it really does affect you.
Onto other things though. Recently I purchased a printer that doubles as a scanner. A really awesome scanner actually. It’s not that great of a printer, it sucks up ink like you wouldn’t believe so I’m not going to buy any more cartridges when it runs out. But the fifty bucks I spent was well worth it for a scanner that is as high a quality as this one is.
I’ve put it to good use. By that, I mean I sat down one day and scanned through 475 pictures I have collected over the years. It was rather interesting to go through them and see my past frozen in time. Check this bad boy out:
If I remember correctly, this was near the beginning of the summer of 1999. I was 17 and my mom offered to pay for all my gas money if I got a hair cut and shaved. Within the hour of this picture being taken it was so, and might I add, well worth it.
I have a whole slew of Starmakers pictures. I found some from the campout for Episode I. Good times. I’ll start posting some of these as well as a couple posts I’ve been intending to write with some pictures I’ve taken with my camera but have been too lazy to follow through with.
Another thing which has recently happened that relates to this topic is that I have acquired my grandpa’s collection of LDS Conference audio cassettes. Check it:
The first session he bought was of October 1978. He has each session from then until April of 2004. Which, conveniently enough, is about the time the Church began putting digital forms of Conference on LDS.org. Which means that I effectively have access to 30 years of Conference. If Conference lasts for 10 hours each session (these earlier ones are actually longer) and there are 2 sessions a year, that means I have at my fingertips about 600 hours of talks from Apostles.
Nice.
But that’s not simply enough for me. And for anyone out there who might also be interested in these tapes, I’m sure it’s not enough for you either. After all, who uses audio cassettes anymore? Whatever am I to do? Oh, hows about I use this old stero of mine which has been gathering dust for me and hook it into my computer like so:
Using Adobe Soundbooth I can capture the audio and make MP3’s out of them all. Huzzah! I am so unbelievably stoked to listen to these.
