Raising Breast Cancer Awareness (among other things)

The main topic of choice on this journal is some form of entertainment, whether it be a video game or something about D&D.  If those topics were forbidden, however, the other option would be to write about something idiotic someone (or some group) has done.  People are a never-ending source of stupidity so it’s not like there would be a lack of writing.  Stupidity is also a very humorous, relieving topic…so long as one is not on the “receiving” end of the critique.  After all, laughter is good medicine and what better thing to laugh at than someone’s own poor judgment?

Today’s victims who deserved to be laughed at are any woman who put the color of her bra in her Facebook status.  The reason for this madness is to raise breast cancer awareness.  It’s too bad a noble cause does not excuse poor judgment.  If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to idiocy is paved with “well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”  The first issue here is that breast cancer awareness month is in October, not January.  It would have made a ton more sense to implement this idea in October!  Perhaps it was and people didn’t know when to stop, which would be just as stupid (if not, more so).

The counter argument to that is that the fight against breast cancer is ongoing and not confined to a single month.  Fine, but what’s with showing “the color of the bra you are currently wearing”?  It would have been easier to just organize a day where all women wear a pink (or peach) bra.

The real issue here is the potential for some woman to become the object of someone’s sexual fantasy…and then end up bitching about it.  A woman posting the color of her bra over the Internet is equivalent to wearing short shorts, both play up sex appeal and only that.  The issue here is not a moral guardian (“this is another instance of our society’s values decaying”) complaint but instead, an issue of choice and consequence.  Women can certainly choose to wear short shorts and post their bra color, it’s a free society and neither breaks any laws.  However, doing either can invite many lewd, sexual comments and assist in perverts devising sexual fantasies.  All too often, the lewd commenter is written off as a pervert or shallow, chauvinistic pig when the woman brought it on herself.  If a woman finds it disturbing that men will leer at her in her short shorts or masturbate to her at night once she’s posted her bra color for all the Internet to see, that makes her ignorant…not a victim.

Of course, men weren’t supposed to find out women were doing this…even though breast cancer also affects men.  Way to raise awareness by leaving out an entire gender!  Also, this was conducted over the Internet and considering how many people use Facebook, did anyone really think a man would not have eventually found out what was going on?  This “game” raised lots of things…but not awareness for breast cancer victims.  If anything, those victims were ridiculed when women decided to e-flash their Facebook friends.  If women don’t want to think that some guy(s) slept soundly to the thought of them in a certain color bikini, perhaps they should think of the consequences of their choices in the future…instead of bitching about how perverted man is.

Assassin’s Creed 2

There are some games that are never worth the price.  Other games could be considered at a discount.  A few, however, are worth full admission.  Assassin’s Creed 2 is worth buying at a discount and could even be worth a full $60.  The gameplay is excellent, if unchanged, from the first installment.  If the gameplay for a game is “excellent” and can only be considered to be worth full admission, then there must be a critical flaw in the game.  The flaw for Assassin’s Creed 2 is the plot.  A plot that had to have been written by a committee of Dan Brown, L. Ron Hubbard and Al Gore.

Well, that’s a rather odd combination…especially since none of them had a direct hand in the game’s writing.  When the game’s plot is analyzed, however, these three names and their ideas can be found.  For instance, Dan Brown’s “contributions” can be found in the overarching plot.  Like the first game, Assassin’s Creed 2 is not about the adventures of an individual in a historical setting.  Instead, it’s about the distant descendant in 2012 reliving those memories via computer generation.  What’s really going on in the game is an age-long rivalry between the assassins and the Templars.  The Templars have “covered up” historical truths to placate and control the masses while questing for Pieces of Eden…which are powerful artifacts they will use to placate and control the masses.  The idea of a millennial plus long conspiracy involving Templars sounds eerily familiar to Dan Brown’s work…it doesn’t help that the game tries very hard to be convincing of this conspiracy.  All the in-game puzzles to unlock “the truth” tell the player every event (the atomic bomb testing, landing on the moon, among others) was to acquire a Piece of Eden.

That is, obviously, not true and seems silly that people could be convinced of it.  However, that’s underestimating how stupid some people are.  How many people bought into the “truths” of The Da Vinci Code, despite that it’s obviously a work of fiction?  If I was to get into teaching, I wouldn’t be surprised if, while teaching a high school history class, a student listed “Rasputin stealing Czar Nicholas II’s staff” as the beginning of the 1905 Russian revolution.

L. Ron Hubbard’s influence can be seen in the sci-fi elements of the plot, but is most obvious at the end.  The end reveals that there was another alien civilization that predated humanity.  This “civilization” then created humanity in their own image, although both sides fought each other when the humans rebelled against their alien masters.  The humans won out, thanks to a natural disaster, and afterwards, both sides work to preventing such a disaster from occurring again.  Oh and these aliens take the names of Roman gods…

The disaster that weakened humanity and L. Ron Hubbard’s intergalactic gods was, in fact, a solar flare.  This is laughable, more so when the protagonists hype up the sun as a bigger threat than the Templars.  True, the sun burning out would suck, but that’s a couple billion years away!  Solar flares are more of a danger to astronauts/spaceships and the very idea one could “reverse the polarity of the earth’s magnetic field” is right there with Al Gore’s claims that global warming climate change is melting enough ice to flood the planet.

Metal Gear Solid has long carried a reputation for fucked up plots.  Assassin’s Creed series has taken that title and wears it proudly.  Good writing indicates a sensible plot and likable characters.  Both Assassin’s Creed games lacked this and it diminishes what would otherwise be a game worth full admission.

New Year Rambling

New year, another chance to bring some life into this desolate place?  No promises.  Ramblings are the equivalent of a fight with no rules.  If concise, orderly, correct and (perhaps) great writing is what you’re looking for, somewhere else might be a better look.  Plus, EMU takes up tons of time.  The kids at orientation scoffed at being told they were expected to complete around 30 hours worth of schoolwork.  Had the workload been that intensive, how many would still have attended?

EMU’s also the first school to critique my writing ability (not that there’s much evidence to be seen here in the archives).  Every paper returned had, in red ink, something about how “I hadn’t found the proper voice.”  What exactly are they looking for?  If teachers are looking for something more professional, they aren’t going to find it.  Academic writing is boring, as is reading it.  Informality allows a variety of twists to be employed, allowing one to get away with things they couldn’t in a more professional environment.  This does not bode well for a career in writing but I wasn’t planning on a journalism major and if everyone plays by the same grammatical/writing/formal rules, how is anyone going to stick out?

So that, added with the lack of writing worth posting, has been on my mind.  I’m also enjoying being living laid-back on campus.  So, laziness is to be blamed here as well.  Instead of looking for or typing something to post, entertainment and sleep have been far more preferable.  Whenever something does catch my eye, it’s usually a link on Facebook…which only requires a paragraph (or less) to write.  Maybe that will change come May…

New Year’s resolutions have been made.  Last year’s involved getting rid of Facebook, which went very well until I decided it was a good way to keep in touch with Jackie and Sandy.  Not going to repeat that this year but I have found the reasons I deleted my account in the first place were legitimate and it would have stayed deleted had Sandy not randomly commented on a post back in April.  That has factored into this year’s resolutions…

This rambling is going to cease because I’ve been up over a day, mostly playing Assassin’s Creed 2, and this has all been on my mind.  Best to ramble in an echo chamber then let these thoughts fester in the head.  Like Captain Jack, I wash my hands of this weirdness.  Last years’ weirdness, in fact, and prepare for the new year…