Monday, December 13, 2010

Life is a video game

This plus that equals ReeeLiife3dRAMA 

In my opinion, when I was a kid in 1995, our generation experienced the most revolutionary and original game consoles/games since Tetris. Nintendo 64 and Playstation were created. And when I say Nintendo 64, I mean Nintendo 64, and when I say Playstation, I mean Playstion 1, not 2, 3, 4, 8, 579, PlaystationMini, or PlaystationVenti.

Then came the Xbox and all of his minions....

….which lead to the inevitable Wii....
…..............which then spiraled into Kinect.....Kinect???? Are you serious??? The Wii was bad enough; graphically it was just as stimulating as Virtual Boy, plus or minus a few colors. While the Virtual Boy only provided a 2 color experience, red & black, it provided (mmm, claimed to provide) a 3D experience. Lovely, lets sacrifice the color, but enhance the depth...that's almost as brilliant as what Microsoft did with Vista, let's sacrifice the speed, but enhance the depth (of the problems, that is). I’ve already said this before, it's a rather pointless endeavor to make something that's real, even more real. It's impossible. It's like saying “let's make Dostoevsky the most depressing author to read!” He's dead, you can't reach him.

Today our world, that is your world if you don't do anything about it, released a “new type of gaming experience.” That's right folks, as if Wii & Kinect wasn't enough, we have added a few more spelling errors, a dash of acronyms and a nonsensical idea: ReeeLiife3dRAMA.

How do I explain what this new gaming experience is like....hmm....
Take Kinect, take the Sims, then take some drugs, and you have...that...thing over there, the aforementioned stupidity. Somehow “they” have manage to inject a video game into real real life. I didn't actually hear about the unveiilng (the double ii is a tribute to Wii) of RL3DR, I, uh, experienced the unvaileng (the spelling errors are a tribute to Kinect).

I happened to be on the metro when out of nowhere the train jolts to a stop. Over the intercom I hear that this train has been hijacked. Next, a SWAT team enters our train-caboose and starts shooting all over the place. People were shot and bleeding. I started crying. The metro started up again. I peed in my pants. The SWAT team stays. I crapped in my pants. Looking through I window I see..Harry Potter..on a broomstick? He waves and takes off faster than the speed of the metro. What the frick?

After about 30 mins. of this caveman's chaos, the SWAT team personnel take off their helmets and introduces themselves with names like: Gamer4Life, HaloIsDead4Ever, TripleTroubleGayMurr58, etc. What kind of a professional police force is this with names like these???

Turns out they're not police, and the people they shot aren't dead and the blood they bled was..virtual?

If things are making sense right now, that's ok, I haven't quite figured out myself how this “virtual life game” thing works.

Regardless, this “new type of gaming experience” is like Kinect, except the “real world” is their virtual platform on which the craziness happens. It's really weird, but we've managed to pull it off. It's like The Matrix. Yup, that's what it's like.

So that's how Microsoft unveiled ReeeLiife3dRAMA.

Speaking of which, how is the Kinect doing in sales? I couldn't help but notice their oh-so-typical- Microsoft approach to advertise their products.

These are definitely actors here in this Kinect ad, their excitement is clearly not being derived from the amount of fun they are having playing this fake-version-of-real-life console, their joy is coming from the exorbitant amount of money Microsoft paid them to act like they enjoy the thing. Like creator, like creation: Kinect makes you feel like it's real and Microsoft's money makes the actors feel as if they enjoy Kinect. Yup, just the way Microsoft does things, it doesn't actually solve the problem, it throws more money at it, giving the illusion of a solution...Microsoft, we will never forget what the Vista operating system did to our nervous system.

Whereas Kinect doesn't offer you blood when you get punched, broken limbs when you fall, or death when you die; ReaLife3DRama is the whole schweppes in a bottle, in a can, it's in your life!

Take a look at the finishing motto on that Kinect ad: “The only experience you need is life experience”
...and what better way to get that real “life experience” than by prancing around like a fool in your living room? How about chopping some wood? (with an ax not a chainsaw) The last 10 seconds shows the creepy camera with one green eye peeking at you... “i never sleep,” it says...
...creepy creepy.

Remember the last time we allowed a webcam operated by a foreign entity to be placed in our living room? If a school was creeping around with it, do you really think a corporation has noble intentions of placing a camera in the epicenter of every home in America? I'm not a conspirator, but let's Kinect the dots folks, I think Wii know what we're getting ourselves into. Global Absurdity.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Passion over Pressure

Don't worry young one, life only gets harder...
and harder....and harder...kind of like these rocks.
Or are they kidney stones?
Annotated Bibliography

Murray, Charles. "Are Too Many People Going to College? — The American, A Magazine of Ideas." Business, Economics, Culture, and More — The American, A Magazine of Ideas. The American Enterprise Association (AEA), 8 Sept. 2008. Web. 06 Nov. 2010. <http://www.american.com
/archive/2008/september-
october-magazine/are-too-
many-people-going-to-college/>.

The author Charles Murray, the W.H. Brady scholar at The American Enterprise Institute, delves deep into the tangled mess of opinions regarding the usefulness of the B.A. degree in this 12-page article appearing in "The American", the journal of the aforementioned institute. This article is the result of his extensive research on this sensitive topic and is abbreviated from his book “Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality”. He answers the worrying call of most all students who are in pursuit or thinking of pursuing a B.A. degree with concrete data spanning from academic performance percentiles to percentages of actual college graduates; he translates what these numbers are revealing about the B.A. system so prized in "class-driven America".

He evaluates the effectiveness of the B.A. as a measure of competence and although he agrees that certain professions (medicine, law, physicians, scientists, engineers) require a rigorous system, he argues that most other professions holding the vast majority of American employment do not have need to have the B.A. as the entrance ticket, as it is only referred to once in the interview (the fact you got it is enough) and never brought up in the office.

In addition, he values the intrinsic rewards of being a successful "electrician" without a B.A. over being a mediocre personnel with a B.A. He is not shy to suggest the possibility and reality that there is a life and successful world outside the B.A. requiring monopoly. Consequently, recognizing what an individual is really strong in plays an important role in determining whether or not one should even try the college route. He makes his point very clear by encouraging potential B.A. pursuers to throw out averages found on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. The essence of his article is summed up in the following example he gives: one who ranks very high in all the areas that are necessary to be an electrician but ranks mediocre and average in all the areas that are necessary to be a manager will, in effect, become a top electrician but a mediocre if not below average manager. The earnings average of B.A. and non-B.A. holders, which is overly relied on by guidance counselors and parents alike, shows that this person will earn much less as a non-B.A. electrician than a top level B.A. manager. However, these averages are not to be applied to this individual as he has the ability to become a top ranking electrician and if he goes the B.A. route will, at best, become a mediocre (if not below par manager). The earnings of these two positions is strikingly attractive. Using these same labor statistics, this individual will earn twice as much as a non-B.A. top level electrician than as a B.A.-holding mediocre manager.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Blog Responses


Please pick one.








It is rare to find people who see through this facade. This post really exposes the superficiality of the myth of 'consumable happiness' in contemporary America (and soon to be found in the whole world). As a native born Russian who moved to America right before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I know firsthand what went on behind the Iron Curtain. I believe what you wrote about youth in America applies to all people in America. I find it interesting that what Soviet Russia did to it's people, America did the same; except the effects were inversely related. What you wrote here is seen in both Communist and Capitalist societies:

Assimilating oneself into an external image of the good life – and submitting to a collectivity – is a perfectly ordinary form of alienated existence in the existing society.

Communist Russia united the people but alienated the country as a whole from the outside world, Capitalist America united the country with the outside world but it alienated it's people from each other. Soviets are propagandists, Americans are advertisers. Our bureaucrats wanted you to buy into an unrealistic socialist ideology, their businessmen want you to buy into an empty dream.

We called ourselves Communists, they call themselves Consumers. What is it in the end but an instructional slogan from the bureaucrat/businessman for how he wants you to behave? Nothing is different. Out propaganda was simple. Work hard for the country because the country is based upon millions of you. This propaganda is simpler. Work hard for yourself because millions of you are the base of the country. In the end Russia's communism united it's people from within but alienated itself as a country from the world, America's capitalism united the country with the world but alienated it's people from each other.




Just by reading the comments that people leave on this post (and the rest of this blog), Lander has truly struck the narcissistic nerve which 'white people' deny they have. It's kinda like wisdom teeth, everyone has em, but we don't need em. And if you don't get rid of your 'wisdom teeth' (this is 'white people' mentality which includes but is not limited to: being convinced you're unique, vulgar display of ego boosting grandstanding, self-serving concern for the poor; to name a few), then you will miserably embarrass yourself because your crooked teeth (your speech, figuratively speaking) will clearly show you haven't removed the narcissist nerve that we all suffer from.

What Lander was getting across in this post is the ridiculous self-righteous pump-me-up feeling 'white people' get from doing something as 'grand' as buying/driving a dumb car. Do people really think that this 'grand' gesture is doing anyone any good? What is this world coming to....probably the only good the prius brought is less noise pollution, as it's really quite, but then again pedestrians can't hear the thing so it's even more hazardous to humans because they can easily step in it's path while crossing the street/parking lot, because they can't hear it coming.

Speaking of 'better mileage', the prius does not get that much more gas mileage than most oldies. My 1999 ford escort gets 34 mpg, just 11 miles shy of the prius....from 1999 to 2010 it took 11 years to get 11 more miles out of a gallon...that...is...sad....and the one who believes that this a superb development is...well...as Chris, who commented on this post put it, someone who “eat[s] bugs from your mate’s hair and dying at 23. Loser.”

So, Christian Lander is not attacking the 'good things' that 'white people have given you', but rather, he is attacking their fickle and self-justifying mindset that dupes them into buying these overpriced not-that-much-more-environmentally-friendly trinkets. It appears you still have your 'wisdom teeth' as you did not see the essence of his blog.