Selling My Soul for Team Fortress 2

So yes, I broke down and joined the TF 2 public beta. In my defense, it seems that doing so actually made more financial sense for me, even if it was a total fucking money grab on VALVe’s part to kill the Black Box (a decision whose importance I did not fully comprehend until I saw that it would be vastly more expensive to buy each component game separately instead of as part of the Orange Box.)

Still, I think this complete and total abandonment of my principles was worth it. It is now very clear why Team Fortress 2 took 9 years to develop- it’s the best multiplayer game of the year. Everything ties into everything else. It’s got a level of balance and polish I’ve rarely ever seen before. The graphics, even on my beat up old system are smooth and clean. Games are fast and tense. It’s got everything you could ever want from a TF game.

If you’ve been waiting for this game, be happy. It doesn’t get much better than this.

All Aboard the Failure Boat!

Some of you may remember that I had some strong opinions about VALVe’s impending release of the Orange Box, and how they decided to sweeten the pre-order deal by tempting us with the Team Fortress 2 beta. I said that it was a cheap and transparent grab for cash, and that it was all too likely to work and reward this kind of money grubbing behavior.

Well it worked.

I’m currently downloading the Team Fortress 2 beta. There’s still no reason for them to have canceled the Black Box, and then to rub it in our face with a beta promise is just vile, but… but I need my fix, damnit! I’ve been waiting the better part of a decade for this game!

SHIT! I Almost Forgot!

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Arrr matey! Hoist the sail on the forecastle!

Back off, ye lubber or I’m like to keelhaul ya!

Yo ho, is that a buxom wench I see?

Yar!

John Stossel- An Enormous Douchebag

Wow man, take a cigar. John Stossel, you sir are an asshole of the highest caliber. Just look at what some of your fans have written about you.

And make sure to watch the video at this link too. It’s hard to believe until you see it, but he actually uses America’s abominable murder statistics as a defense of his Free Market Is Always Better claptrap.

“Well of course Canadians live longer! They don’t murder each other as much. What’s that? You want hefty taxes on ammunition, strong investment in anti-poverty initiatives, or maybe a de-privatized prison system that focuses on rehabilitation instead of fruitless punitive measures? Go to Hell you commie bastard!”

Click here to see him on the receiving end of a literal Karmic bitchslap.

Seen During My Stumbling Around the Net

Mine milkshake bringeth all yon gentlefolk to mine yard
and lo they reply ” ‘Tis better than thine…
“Verily, ’tis better than thine!”
I could apprentice thee, but I wouldst levy a fee

Grist For The Paranoia Mill

One of the real problems with struggling against our steady decline into a police state is that periodically those of us who support not being oppressed have to rush to the defense of idiots like this one:

Now the way the police treated him is unforgiveable and should cost them all their badges. He was doing nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong. He wasn’t being disruptive to the point where he should have been evicted, and even if he had been, that does not justify the use of a taser, which is not meant to enforce simple compliance but rather is designed to be an alternative to killing people.

But I have to say, this guy showed an incredible degree of self-righteous idiocy. He didn’t actually seem to want to hear answers from Kerry, but rather just rant at him. Dear God, man, have some dignity! If the people of this country are ever going to be united against a power-drunk government, we will need orators who inspire and enlighten people, not students who damage the legitimacy of their own cause with self-absorbed “gotcha” theatrics. What was the point of that Skull & Bones question? Was this guy trying to imply that Kerry threw the election? By bringing that line of questioning up in that context, this student helps reinforce a media-driven narrative that anyone who questions the legitimacy of the 2004 election is a crazy conspiracy theorist.

Oh, and Mr. Kerry, the way you continued answering this question without making any suggestion to the cops about how they might want to stop urinating all over the Constitution? Real classy.

Wii is Offically King of the Mountian

The Wii has now sold 9 million units, compared to the Xbox 360’s 8.9 and the PS3’s 3.7. The Wii was released a year after the Xbox 360, and a bit less than a month after the PS3.

As a gamer who still remembers with sadness the bitter closing days of the Battle of 16 Bits when a beleaguered SEGA was forced into a tactical withdrawal that later became a full blown rout, I meet the news of the Wii’s ascendancy with unexpected feelings of approval. After SEGA’s ultimate defeat when it’s Sega Saturn was caught flat-footed between Nintendo’s N64 and and Sony’s unexpected PlayStation offensive and subsequently ground down to paste, I still remained loyal to Sonic. With my old honorable enemy Nintendo now duking it out with the dastardly and underhanded newcomer Sony, there wasn’t really anything left to hold my interest in the console scene, so I drifted away and eventually found a calling as a hardcore PC loyalist.

Aside from viewing them as my traditional antagonists, I never harbored a real grudge against Nintendo, and I never quite forgave Sony for attacking SEGA from behind. Even when I played my friend’s PS2, there was always an almost subliminal sense that part of me wasn’t participating in the game. I may be playing the enemy’s game, but it wasn’t because I approved of them. I justified my occasional playing of the PS2 as simply adapting to the times. It wasn’t like I was giving Sony money or anything. Like all real gamers, I was a PC man. Everything else was just dabbling.

It was the Wii that brought me back out of that haze of self-justifying bullshit. Sony and the new-newcomer Microsoft had slugged it out in the last generation, with Sony retaining the top spot, but losing a lot of precious ground to Master Chief’s headlong charge onto the Internet, and both sides were gearing up for another round. Each of them seemed to decide that innovation was a secondary concern, and that this fight would be decided by sheer brute force. The PS3 and the Xbox 360 were little more than their respective antecedents’ clones, but with bigger numbers and wireless controllers. While these two titans limbered up for a final climactic showdown, Nintendo quietly burned their copy of the rules of engagement and began developing their own strategy for victory. It was brilliant in it’s simplicity: sell games to the millions of people who don’t play video games; achieve this through innovation. And thus the Wii-mote was born.

That one defiant bellow of innovation in the face of an industry beset by stagnation is what got me to look at consoles seriously again. Well, that and the prohibitive cost of a top of the line gaming computer. I seriously considered getting a Wii, and although I ended up settling on an Xbo 360, I feel that I have come full circle. Nintendo used to be the enemy, and while I still don’t consider myself “one of them,” I now see Nintendo as being in some small way my ally and champion, just as they are the champion of every gamer who longs for change, originality, and ultimately innovation in the pursuit of fun.

So congratulations Nintendo, you’ve earned it. May you sell 9 million more.

Six Minutes to Midnight

I wish I’d thought of suggesting this, because in retrospect it seems obvious. The ACLU has started a Surveillance Society Clock, similar to the Doomsday Clock of nuclear war fame. Happily, it starts us off with a whole six minutes to spare, so we don’t have to worry about sanding off our Land of the Free bumper stickers anytime soon. Whew!

From the ACLU’s page:

The reality is we are fast approaching a genuine surveillance society in the United States – a dark future where our every move, our every transaction, our every communication is recorded, compiled, and stored away, ready to be examined and used against us by the authorities whenever they want. The ACLU has created this Surveillance Clock to symbolize just how close we are to a “midnight” of a genuine surveillance society. But it’s not too late – there is still time to save our privacy.

I often hear the argument “if you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.” Well what about if you did something stupid? Or embarrassing? Or something that could be construed into a socially damaging allegation? Yeah, it might not be used against you in a court of law, but the threat of disclosure sure would come in handy as leverage if Big Brother ever wants you to do something you don’t want to. More pointedly, a full surveillance state would enable the government to suppress dissenting political (or even revolutionary) organization efforts. It wouldn’t even require a blatantly unconstitutional use of the police to keep people away from attending the wrong sort of meetings. It could be done with much more subtlety and finesse, allowing those in power to maintain a charade of constitutionality that they could use to justify their rule and paint those who oppose them as being “criminal” and those they suppress as merely experiencing the allegedly-justified consequences of their actions. After all, it’s not the government’s job to protect people from their own bad judgment, though being the caring and benevolent organization that it is, it would be more than happy to let them go with a simple slap on the wrist if they agree to straighten up and fly right.

For example:

“Well Mr. Smith, I’d love to recommend you for that promotion, but we’ve been getting some disturbing reports about your, shall we say, extravocational activities. Now I don’t want to imply that you have done anything…illegal as such, but we have evidence of you attending some rather questionable meetings. I’m sure you have nothing to do with any wrongdoing, but I say, it does seem to signify a lapse of judgment on your part to be seen associating with these people, doesn’t it? Now, Mr. Smith you have done a lot of good work for this firm, and I know you’re a decent man. If you could prove to the higher-ups that you realize your mistake and want no more to do with them, well then I don’t see why this little incident should harm your career at all.”

You see how easy I was able to dream that up? And I’ve never even been in power!

Similarly, those who refuse to be cowed by such tactics could/will be labeled as “trouble-makers” who want to “disturb the peace” and thus deserve whatever social repercussions land on them.

This danger is very real and needs to be addressed. And if Congress won’t do anything about it, we may have to find some way to force them to.

The Truth About 9/11

The real twisted genius of the 9/11 conspiracy theory is that at first blush, it makes a crude sort of sense. We’re supposed to be the strongest nation on Earth, so how could we be so grievously wounded by 19 men with box cutters? How could they have gotten past our invincible Federal Government? Answer: they couldn’t have. Therefore, it must be an inside job. This is sort of the logic equivalent of a hastily constructed false-front set for a movie, where buildings are represented by painted sheets of particle board nailed to a frame of 2×4’s. Sure it looks fine from a distance, but if you walk over and give it one good kick, the whole damn thing is likely to fall over and crush somebody.

Ah, Much Better.

My Internet is back, at least for now. Regular posting to resume as soon as I figure out what to say.