Tag: Things Having Nothing to do with Anything

Sorry it’s Monday so the week’s news cycle has started up meaning I have to drop in some filler material to make my daily post count goal.

There exists an undefined rule of drama; any community that exists will eventually have to deal with drama. Normally I avoid these episodes of drama llama wrangling because it’s counter-productive and pointless. Yet there are times that the posts lighting off these wrangling events have something I want to talk about buried within and this is one of those case.

There is a post over at The Truth About Guns where Mr. Farago makes a claim that there is apparently some secret gun blogger blacklist which his site is placed upon. I’ve been running this blog for over two years now and I still don’t get invited to the secret cabal meetings between gun bloggers so maybe I’m simply out of the loop, but I’m not aware of any such blacklist. What makes this claim more dubious is the fact that Mr. Farago has provided no actual evidence. He claims that he won’t reveal the evidence because he received his information with a promise of anonymity as the price tag, but that doesn’t mean anonymized data can’t be released. Simply providing some kind of evidence would greatly help Mr. Farago’s claim that such a blacklist exists.

Whatever, that’s not my concern. There are two things I do wish to write about in regards to the linked post. First Mr. Farago mentions the supposed unwritten rule amongst gun bloggers to not link to anti-gun websites. I’m aware of no rule and decided to enact this strategy myself without exterior pressure. Why? Because I don’t want them to get any Google love from me and, more importantly, I don’t want to deal with the drama a pingback on an anti-gun site can often induce. In my defense I don’t throw the link out, I provide a raw link that people can copy and paste in their web browser, I simply refuse to surround the raw link with the required ‘a’ tag.

The next point I wish to discuss requires you to read the comments on the linked post. I have a strict policy of not discussion or mentioning religion on this blog unless it’s absolutely necessary to make a point about something else. There isn’t a post on this site that promotes and detest any religion or lack thereof. Once again there is a reason I have this police, because discussing religion can only lead to a pointless sidetrack debate. The two topics on my blacklist when conversing with people I don’t know are politics and religion. Due to the nature of this blog I discuss politics a lot, which is enough to start a shit storm. As I have enough of a shit storm to deal with the last thing I really want to discuss is religion as it’s just going to create a another shit storm. Ladies and gentlemen this blogger has a strict one shit storm limit! I submit the comments in the linked article as evidence of this claim.

One person was offended that Mr. Farago used the phrase “God given right.” As the offended person made that comment somebody was offended that the commenter was offended and thus a new post was created. What followed was a back and forth discussing religion which had nothing to do with the topic at hand. In addition to sparking an unrelated sidetrack conversation the discussion was also completely pointless. How so? Because religious debate is always pointless. Those who believe in religion will not be swayed and those who don’t believe in religion will not be swayed. Both sides demand proof and provide what they consider to be proof and neither is ever acceptable to the other side. Those who believe in religion have faith (that’s the definition of religion) while those who don’t believe in religion lack such faith. Neither side is going to convince the other that they’re wrong therefore the entire debate is pointless.

If you believe in a religion cool keep doing it. If you don’t believe in religion cool keep doing it. Unless somebody is willing to commit acts of violence in the name of their belief of lack thereof it’s not your concern.

Also I’d appreciate it if somebody would invite me to the secret gun blogger cabal meetings. I promise I won’t tell anybody about them.

I don’t talk about video games very often on my site because I don’t play them nearly as often as I used to. Part of the reason for this is a lack of new games that I find appealing. Once in a while I come across a gem like Red Dead Redemption or Bulletstorm but most games have little appeal to me (unless it’s a MegaMan title, I’ll play any game with that label on it at least once).

First person shooters are a genre I used to love but become disenfranchised with over time. Part of the reason for this is the games have become more “realistic” in some ways and far too easy in others. For the most part shooters that let you carry every damned gun in the game are gone and instead restrict the player to carrying a measly two weapons. Is this more realistic? Sure. Is it more fun? No. It almost broke my heart when I first played Duke Nukem Forever only find that since his previous adventure 12 years ago Duke somehow forgot the skill of storing 10 guns on his person.

The other trend in shooters that has created boredom for me is the concept of magically regenerating health. Like restricting the player to two weapons, regenerating health is part of what I call Halo syndrome. No matter how many bullets your body has been riddled by if you can manage to hide behind cover for 10 seconds all will be fine again. Two problems arise with such a system; first it removes 90% of the challenge once found in first person shooters and second it removes any consequences from using poor tactics. I like knowing if I did something overly stupid I’m going to be punished for it which will better ensure I’ll learn my lesson.

During the start of this dumbing down phase of first person shooters one title was released that I absolutely fell in love with, Serious Sam. Serious Sam can be best summed up as Doom with far larger battles and better graphics. It was not uncommon in Serious Sam to have single battles last for minutes on end with, literally, hundreds of monsters being tossed at you. Best of all you could carry every gun in the game at all times (which you needed as you started running out of ammo for any single gun during common battles) and your health didn’t magically regenerate after finding cover for ten seconds.

It should go without saying that I’m completely psyched for Serious Sam 3 which a writer at Ars Technica was able to play a pre-release copy of. His report on the game makes me realize I’ll probably have to upgrade my graphics card so I can play this when it’s released. The game seems to be nothing more than a clone of Serious Sam 2 which was a clone of Serious Sam which is exactly what I want (I’m a huge fan of the MegaMan series, needless to say I’m completely OK with games that are basically clones of previous titles).

If more shooters were like this I’d probably still find time to play video games more often than I currently do. I never enjoyed the titles like Call of Duty, Rainbow Six, and their ilk as they tried to be somewhat realistic (I said somewhat, I know they’re not realistic overall). I don’t play video games because I want a realistic portrayal of combat, I play video games because I want to pilot at 30 meter tall walking robot with fucking guns for arms. I can’t do that in real life because, sadly, our scientists fail to see the need for 30 meter tall walking robots. Likewise I can’t fly a spaceship, carry 10 guns, or deploy and orbital ion cannon on an enemies construction yard in real life so I have to relegate such desires to video games.

Here’s to titles like Serious Sam who give the finger to realism and focus instead on pure fun and enjoyment. I would love to see such titles flood the market but alas I’m doubting that will happen again anytime soon.