Viva la Vida

Post From Vox:

This conversation was a couple of months ago, but a thought train has led me back to it.

When I was away travellin’ on the mainland, we were shindiggin’ every night, and one night in particular was a fancy dress party; the theme: no clothes. Go dressed as anything you want as long as it wasn’t standard clothing.

Most of us didn’t have a lot of spare money for a particularly fancy dress or anythin’, so it really came down to being creative and finding the cheapest way to dress up, using anythin’ from bin bags (I bought the box, half a dozen others decided to steal them because they never got anythin’ before then sayin’ that they weren’t gunna bother…bastards!), towels, linens, cloths, boxes, cardboard and strung up playin’ cards. (I wore a Venician mask with a hooded top made out of bin bags!). Most of it came from local supermarkets and shops wherever anyone could grab things fast and easy.

My Fancy Dress:

Before the party, as mentioned, a lot of folk said they weren’t gunna bother, but you knew that they would in the end (even if some of them did just snatch my shit) but there was one girl who actually didn’t. She said she wouldn’t bother and put no effort into trying or caring; didn’t even take any of other people’s stuff at the end.

I was askin’ her why and her reasoning was that she didn’t feel like spending money on something that would only last for one night, even if it was only a couple of quid.

This is an alien notion to me, personally. A few bob out of my pocket won’t go amiss in trade for a memory (a fuzzy one, albeit) that will last a lifetime, so why did she value an incredibly temporary hard currency in favour of the memory?

At the end of the trip, I bumped into her again at our hostel (the Hans Brinker) in Amsterdam. It was a particularly shite hostel, but they used it as a markettin’ strategy…so they weren’t even subtle about it. The floor was black, lockers were in pieces (except the big crazy security boxes at the front) and beds were….well…

So the rooms were shitty (although I lucked out due to the hostel bein’ pretty full and I wound up in an otherwise fancy room), but as all things go it wasn’t terrible…I wouldn’t say it was specifically unhealthy as such and the food was still pretty tasty, but the main reason we were there was because of it’s location; smack in the middle of the city. All the other hostels were far out and would require more extensive travel to reach the good bits of Amsterdam, so for a less than luxurious hostel stay, it was pretty worth it.

Hans Brinker Intro Poster:

Anyhoo, this girl in question seemed to not be able to ignore the condition of the hostel and appeared to be seriously against it. At first I just thought she was bein’ moaney, but then she said that her whole trip would be ruined in her mind because every time she thought of it, she would only remember these last days in a shitty hostel (and ignorin’ everythin’ else…)

So she is very selective about which key memories are important to her, seeming to favour the most recent ones only…keep the money for tomorrow, remember the last day and ignore every great day before it (although really…I thought Amsterdam was great…but I may be somewhat bias…). Took me till a conversation about health to find out what makes this one tick.

Forget what made it come up…I was totally out of it by that point, but it was bad food or drugs or alcohol or somethin’ that spurred her saying that by doing that, that I would knock an easy twenty years off my lifespan (she knows these things because she’s a nurse) and that I could die as early as seventy…

woow, hoh hoold on a bloody minute…seventy?

I’m already older than I expected to live some years ago and even now don’t see myself breathing much, if at all, past my thirties…knockin’ my lifespan down from 90 to 70 should be a concern to me?

I said this to her to a…well, I guess a fairly expected reaction of shock and outrage…how could I possibly not want to live to be over 100?

She knew people that were 100 years and lovin’ it, she said…and she herself intended to be alive at a mouldy old age of gray and decay…but she is doing this at some great expense, it seems. She rarely drinks at all, doesn’t eat anything unhealthy, doesn’t do drugs blah blah blah and basically cares more about being alive than living.

It seems like such an easy choice to me…the two of us, vastly different. I expect to die at an age I’d consider “ripe”, and in my dying moments on the floor with alcohol and drugs pouring out my eyes, or nose to nose with a 40mph bus or some such, I expect that “life flashing” shit to be fairly interestin’ to watch…a quick movie of all the good nights I could muster, that fancy dress party, travellin’, good jobs, fun as fuck games, good people, even sittin’ enjoyin’ some peace and quiet and everythin’ else I try to to do enjoy….

That sound right to me!

Her…she plans on dyin’ at an age that proportionately, if she was a foodstuff, she’d have shrivelled to the size of a peanut, grown mould, stink the house out and in all likelihood lethally poison anyone who so much as inhaled from it, and on her wonderful, safe, clean deathbed, she can go to those memories of sittin’ at a fancy dress party with everyone askin’ her why she didn’t dress up, parties that she was sober through, Coffeeshops that she was lucid in and all you can eat restaurants that she ate little more than what you’d find in your own cupboard.

Why does the second option sound like a punishment to me? Am I wordin’ it with an extreme bias? Probably, but that doesn’t seem like a real life option to me…that sounds like a terror of death…she’s not extending her life because she wants to live so badly, she’s just trying to avoid the dyin’ bit at the end…even at the cost of actually enjoying her life.

To me, life isn’t about having a long, full, perfect life and finding immortality or some shit…it’s about enjoying it while it lasts, hammerin’ through it on hard mode with the nearest shotgun and makin’ sure you scored at least a healthy 90% when the credits roll (yes, in this metaphor life is a computer game) so that you know that you owned it to shit.

Death? Why should we be afraid of death…purely because of the unknown? Who gives a fuck? Everythin’ we do is unknown. The first time I stuck a lit match in my mouth I expected it to burn and wound up realisin’ how good it was. First time I ate a new meal I either liked it or didn’t like it. First time I rode a rollercoaster I just short of shat myself raw, but fuck me I did it again.

Death isn’t some thing we should avoid and delay and postpone, it’s somethin’ we should look forward to and experience because it’s just another thing we do in life. I’ve come damn close to dyin’ a good few times already and that experience alone is euphoric, to say the least. Even if it is the last thing…that just means we should make sure that we get as much done as possible before smashin’ that final boss…because even if there is or isn’t some crazy irrational afterlife or some mystic god awaitin’ us and it is just a logical cesation, then at least the dying itself is somethin’ you know you’ll only ever feel once.

Despite the nigh contradictory name, I find this song to be a perfect encouragement of my belief in the issue, choosin’ to leave behind notions and fears of social rejection or slow boring lives in favour of doing what you want, the way you want it, even if it makes you feel like a complete alien!

whyPhones?

My phone started to act up; runnin’ out of charge incredibly quickly or takin’ longer than it should need to charge, maybe freezing and locking up or turnin’ off randomly, perhaps the screen glitches or it would do the wrong thing.  I dealt with it for a month or two before decidin’ that it’s time was up and that I needed a new phone; after all I’d had that mobile for nearly a decade.

So I go into the shop sporting my age-old mobile that the sales guy said he could remember havin’ once upon a time and has since been through another 8 or 9 upgrades, shocked at the revelation that I like to keep mine for lengthy periods, not succumbing to this frivolous and fickle nature people have towards their phones…poor wee machines!  Anyhoo, I went in there knowin’ what I want and ask him to be received by an expression that may well have found me introducing myself as a citizen of the Crab Nebula; I had asked for a large phone with as few buttons as possible (nice big ones, at that) and a simple menu that I can easily organise contacts and text messages with.

Supposedly, these are traits that have become somewhat unfashionable with mobile phones, folk nowadays preferring to have almost every digital and virtual part of their lives compacted inside their handhelds to the point where it’s beginnin’ to replace laptops entirely.  Personally, I don’t want my e-mail accounts, youtube favourites, twitter, facebook, myspace, my blogs, virtualised take-away menus and the yellow pages all stuffed inside my phone when I have that all in my computer anyways; I want my phone to do it’s job, to do the thing that my computer can’t do; text and call.  I quite like my phones to be quite simple; none of these handheld-sized keyboards, or buttons so small that I couldn’t hit them with a needle, or screens so tiny and cramped that I’d need ultra-powerful glasses to properly read it.  I also don’t care for touchscreens or fourteen and a half thousand different menu options and most importantly I don’t care about nearly four digit price tags or monthly payments.  I want a nice, simple phone that has 11 comfortably sized buttons, a pretty screen and a wonderful barely-two digit price tag; after browsin’ around I even found one with a bitchin’ slidey part on top so it stays small and gets bigger when I need it to!  One shifts work was all I needed for a beautiful new wee mobile without all that bloody hassle.

So, why am I tellin’ you all this?

Because to get my kick-arse new phone, the sales guy had to go lookin’ in the back stock rooms and checkin’ the catalogues and everythin’ to find a phone that even remotely fitted my dscription; everythin’ else was predominantly iPhones.  iPhones, iPhones, fuckin’ iPhones.

I don’t see the attraction, really.  Ignorin’ the ridiculous price and the fact that you actually need more for insurance to cover it because it will probably get stolen or is far from smash-to-pieces-proof, there’s jus’ so much unnecessary shit in it.  Am I missin’ the secret wows of havin’ a portable PC when I could jus’ use a nice, comfortable keyboard and mouse with a huge flatscreen monitor?  Why should I really want to have to work everythin’ on a tiny handheld that requires me downloading thousands of apps to get everythin’ even nearly working or not workin’ properly at all, not to mention the stuff that I jus’ couldn’t do anyways; what about the porn?!

So they say you have a computer as well to do everythin’ else that the iPhone can’t do…but wait a minute, the computer can do everythin’ the iPhone can do as well and better!  So really the only thing that it has over a computer is the fact that you can make calls and texts with it…but payin’ extortionate prices for that privilege when I could have the exact same effect much cheaper seems hardly worth it to me.

Especially considerin’ what happens when you overly rely on your magical iPhone and it gets lost/stolen/broken and you realise that all your e-mails, pictures, facebook stuff and whatever else that was saved onto a drive that can get lost inside any woman’s purse, you think “Shit, if only that was all saved onto a nice, big, safe computer at home, this would never have happened…”

I think I’ll stick to bein’ old-fashioned, thanks.

Supernatural Season 6

Am I the only one excited about it?  By the end of this week I’ll be scourin’ the interwebs lookin’ for a version that plays it here…damned if I’m gunna wait till it comes out on my wee island!

Fuck off, please.

I chose to add this post in today to continue with my apparent theme of cultural rules on rudeness. It’s an old one from Vox, but I still feel pretty strongly about it because I see it being abused on a daily basis. Think I’m almost out of these so will probably get on to posting my other rants about other things later on.

Post From Vox:

Fuck off, please.

Sounds polite?

Damn well should, because as well all know, that magic word “please” makes anything automatically more polite and shiny and more appropriate in any given situation.

Right?

Personally, I think the word “please” is a crock of shit. I believe that words in a language are no different than motors on the motorway; just engines to get you from A to B, but the manner and intention in which you do it comes from the driver.

What I mean is that you can be driving a big honkin’ lorry (let’s say that this lorry represents the word “fuck”) and everyone automatically assumes that it’s going to kill them all because it’s a big badass….but no one knows that it’s just a some daft clown driving and having a laugh, not tryin’ to hurt anyone.

Now, envision a wee mini cooper (let’s say that this represents “please”) and everyone just assumes that it’s good…but if the driver is a bloody psychopath and plows into the Merc next to him and causes a fifteen story pile-up…well, everyone’s gunna go ahead and blame the lorry driver and he winds up in jail with three life sentences and a bar of soap he’ll never forget.

Now I know that seemed like too much of an extension into my metaphor, but my point is that just because a word is typically accepted as something doesn’t mean it automatically is nor should be, especially when no one can really explain it.

Now, in my previous post I talked about my views on swearing which made more or less the same point….that fuck and shite are only really bad if you intend them to be bad. However, this addition of “please” onto any given sentence I don’t feel has the same effect…even if you are entirely well meaning, it can’t just totally twist the intention around…especially if you already had that intention w/o the word. No single word has that kind of power…it’s only words, and words without intention are like cars without drivers: bloody useless.

“Want to give me that over?”

“Want to give me that over, please?”

The only difference I see or hear in those examples is the word alone. I usually say the first one and say it in a respectful tone as possible, and thank them if/when they do it for me, but people often give ME the dirty look and tell me that I should say please.

Why?

What change does adding the word do? Would it still be polite if I said “shut up and gimme that now….please”?

Would it still be polite if I said it in a disrespectful tone or rushed them?

If anyone can explain to me why the addition of a single word should inherently change the entire tone of a sentence irrespective of the speakers actual tone and body language, then hell…maybe I’ll just delete all these linguistics posts and change my view on them all…but so far the best answer anyone’s managed to give me is “because it’s polite – why? – becasue it just is”.

I’ve spoken to a few folks about these types of things (like my examples “fudge off and fuck off”) they actually see as completely separate things. So many folk put so much feeling, intention, meaning and emphasis behind a solitary word alone. I don’t feel that’s how language was intended to be. Language includes more than words, it’s about tone, intention and body language too…the words are just your wee vehicles on that road. Take away the road, the drivers and the mentalities of said drivers and you just wind up with scrapyard of wasted motors in single-file, wondering what the point is anymore.

That was the post from Vox from some time ago. I’ve had a fair few discussions about it since and, to be fair, heard better arguments for it but I still stand firm in my belief that it’s a redundant word. It’s been suggested that it’s a additive word, meant to be tagged onto a polite question to make it yet more polite and doesn’t work it the question itself isn’t already, and that’s what I think the fall point of that question is; if it’s only polite when the speaker is polite and worthless when the speaker is rude, is the word actually doing anythin’ at all?

As I said in my other posts, I try to be understanding (at least to a much higher degree than I used to be) and accept that if others say it, they might mean it fully intentionally (such as my fiancae, who’s crazy about saying it, but I’ve never heard her say it without meaning it full well) and I’ll accept that that’s their view…but people rarely accept my view, even when presented with an explanation behind it. I don’t see why I should have to say please if I’m being perfectly polite.

What really pisses me off are the people who treat it as a “magic” word that will transform everythin’ at it’s mere usage. Running in, rushing me and telling me to do something fairly rudely, not even making eye contact, then slapping a please on at the end so they can insist that it was perfectly polite, then wondering why I deliberately didn’t do what they’d asked. Too many people treat it that way and expect that language behind it to mean nothing and those single words to do everything. Curious thing is that I’ve found that these are more often than not the same people that find swear words automatically offensive, irrespective of context.

Some people say they call it the “magic word” because it’s so powerful. Personally I believe it’s called the “magic word” because it’s what parents teach their children to say to show the world that they intend to be polite when they’re still at that age that they don’t actually know how to properly be so, but that as they grow up they’re meant to learn to be polite and ditch the magic and fantasy just like santa and fairytales and accept the fact that they’ll have to put effort into it. It’s the people who grow up continuing to think that no matter what they do or so and how they do or say it is meaningless, as long as they say please.

To them, I say “fuck off, please.”

Get Fudged!

Post From Vox:

Get fudged?

Go eat sugar and dance!

Hmm…

Doesn’t quite have the same effect as “Go eat shit and die” does it?  Why is that, exactly?

Well, most folk would say that it’s due to the profanities; swearing is evil/bad and makes things worse automatically.

Buuuuuuuut, ever ask your parents why swearing is bad?  Other than the obvious “Because it just is” answer, the typical response tends to be along the lines of “intention”.  You mean bad things, therefore the word is bad.

Now, if we take that response to heart, then “Go eat sugar and dance” should be no less cruel and mean, regardless of how humorous it sounds.  Despite the family-friendly wording, it still surmounts to “Fuck off”, so why should it automatically be better?

People may then tell you that it’s down to the words being nasty alone, but that doesn’t meet any kind of rationality.  How can a word be bad?  Even “good” words can be bad, if used in context.

“Have fun in prison, serial killer” for example.

And “bad” words can easily be used to be good, in appropriate context:

“Have a fucking great day!”.

Almost any English teacher should be able to tell you that these types of words aren’t inherently bad, they’re just amplifiers to the context of the sentence, which should only imply that the sentence, context or speaker is bad; not the words.  Fuck and shit only enhance or strengthen the feeling behind the context, not inherently make it bad.

But then, why the stigma against swearing in obviously good contexts?  Why should I be punished for tellin’ someone what a shit-hot job they did today?  Why shouldn’t I be punished for telling someone to fudge off and snap their fruitcakey neck?

To add this this, studies have been done in the past years that indicate that swearing in the workplace is actually beneficial, and has shown to help relieve stress by getting their emotions out there, as opposed to locking them up at work and being suppressed.  Who’d have thunk that swearing could actually be good?

Swearophobes will immediately debate against this study, saying that it’s bullsnot and can’t possibly be true, or that whether it’s true or not people should not swear at work…but why not?  If it’s shown that work colleagues being permitted to swear amongst each other will relieve stress (and in turn surely boost morale/work effort) then denying people that right based on some irrational prejudice against a few words can only be hurting the situation, for the sake of trying to sound “polite”?

It’s got me though.  I’ve spent my years so far working in kitchens, where swearing and shouting is pretty encouraged and common, whether the boss likes it or not, and can first hand say that after screaming at someone’s face for dropping their funky mince-pie, a chef will inarguably look more relaxed, and said mince-pie dropper will be used to it and usually shout back anyways, typically encouraging a lot of stress-free chests afterwards before goin’ back to havin’ a laugh with everyone, includin’ whoever they jus’ shouted at!  There’s never any tense, awkward atmospheres when everyone’s quite happy to scream and bawl at each other, and folk realise that it’s only just words, so what’s the problem?

We could always make it more of a laugh by replacing the words out though, but it may not have that edge of stress-relief…why not?  Well I’d probably guess at the fact that we’re not using our amplifier words to enhance the emotion behind it, therefore not as much of that emotion is getting released into the air/someone’s face.

Regardless, it seems pretty obvious to me that fuck, shit, balls, arse, dick and the like are just words, and contextually no more offensive or mean that funk, sugar, ballerinas, ankle or donkey.

Compare:

“Get that stupid, arse-brained dickhead out of my fucking office before I kick the shit out of him from the balls up!“

“Get that stupid ankle-brained donkeyhead out of my funky office before I kick the sugar out of him from the ballerinas up!!

Talking Politely, Talking Rudely

Being polite is something I’ve always battled against the world with and has caused immense problems for me throughout my life.  Not because I’m a particularly rude person who doesn’t give a shit, but because my views of what’s rude and polite don’t always meet up with standard expectations.  I can have a perfectly normal conversation with someone, then later on be shouted at because of how rude I was and I genuinely won’t know what I said wrong; I just don’t know the standard, normal rules of rudeness.

Why do I have so much trouble, you ask?  Well if I had to stretch at an answer I’d probably say it’s because in general, the typical rules of being polite are utter mince and rarely make sense, even when examined under the scope of someone who adheres by such rules.

My previous post about Curiosity is one from my Vox blog, along with a myriad of other posts that I’ll get around to transferring at some point detailing my abject confusion and disdain of numerous politenesses that make no sense to me, such as the magic words of life, but since I have other posts on them and will re-post them here once I’ve retouched them, I’ll get on to the one specific thing that’s caught my attention today, relating to my previous post:

People see me twitchin’ and shit and never ask why I do it.  The only people who have ever asked me are people who already know what it is and have some other question about it, and have always been drunk when doing so (when my tics can get particularly bad) but anyone else seems totally blocked off to the question.  In my previous post (when it was on Vox) a comment was left saying that they don’t ask about it for the sake of not being rude.  (As in the first paragraph here, I couldn’t even get my head around it, being utterly unaware that this was construed as a rude thing to do) and when I was talking to my fiancae about her mothers reaction to my tics I asked why she waited till I had left and asked her, as opposed to just asking me: “She didn’t want to be rude”.

Even now, as I write this I can’t make sense of why this is rude because personally, I have no problems with asking people what’s wrong, or with them asking me; it just isn’t a rude thing to do in my eyes, but y’know what really kicks it home?  The fact that in both my eyes and the eyes of the normal society, talking behind people’s backs is considered rude.

What does this entail?  The politeness normalcy dictates that one should never talk behind someone’s back, yet cannot speak to their face without being rude.  So how do we talk to other humans?

Well, we blog, I guess.

“I’ve Always Wondered…”

A Post from Vox:

Words that are said all too often, imo.  The only response I can ever think of is “Then why didn’t you ask?”.

I can’t help but be curious what drives people inhibitions to higher levels than their curiosity to discover and learn.   If I was a cat I’d be a zombie already w/ the amount of times I’ve let my curiosity make my decisions for me, yet so many folk are so happy to sit back and jus’ never find out, even at the expense of a simple question.

My firs to head example is that I have Tourettes and as such am prone to twitchin’ a lot.  People will eye me up and watch me throughout the day, but more often than not do it quite subtly or pretend they don’t notice, even when it interrupts my talkin’; they never say anythin’.

Then, maybe years later somethin’ will bring it up in conversation and it’ll be mentioned what it is and they always say “Y’know, I always wondered why you did that…”

“Why didn’t you ever ask then?”

Their response is usually a pretty incoherent babble about not wantin’ to bein’ sure or it never bothered them that much or they weren’t that curious….well, you obviously bloody were if you always wondered!

So, in the eternal battle of inhibitions and curiosity, which one gets the upper hand, when and why?  What makes it so much easier for some people to simply ask or explore, while others can’t manage to get themselves to answer that question they keep askin’ themselves?

Words that are said all too often, imo.  The only response I can ever think of is “Then why didn’t you ask?”.

I can’t help but be curious what drives people inhibitions to higher levels than their curiosity to discover and learn.   If I was a cat I’d be a zombie already w/ the amount of times I’ve let my curiosity make my decisions for me, yet so many folk are so happy to sit back and jus’ never find out, even at the expense of a simple question.

My first to head example is that I have Tourettes and as such am prone to twitchin’ a lot.  People will eye me up and watch me throughout the day, but more often than not do it quite subtly or pretend they don’t notice, even when it interrupts my talkin’; they never say anythin’.Then, maybe years later somethin’ will bring it up in conversation and it’ll be mentioned what it is and they always say “Y’know, I always wondered why you did that…”
“Why didn’t you ever ask then?”
Their response is usually a pretty incoherent babble about not wantin’ to bein’ sure or it never bothered them that much, not wantin’ to be rude (I’ll get back to that bit!) or they weren’t that curious….well, you obviously bloody were if you always wondered!
So, in the eternal battle of inhibitions and curiosity, which one gets the upper hand, when and why?  What makes it so much easier for some people to simply ask or explore, while others can’t manage to get themselves to answer that question they keep askin’ themselves?

Better Late than Never…Sometimes

For the most part, I’d agree with the statement.  For instance, runnin’ into your morning class before an exam with a hangover and no time for a shower is definitely better than jus’ not showin’ up at all and failin’ the course, but I think sometimes the concept is missed.

I mean, the action hero of the moment will kick a door down, blood splattered all over his body and a train door handcuffed to his leg (you, as the viewer will be aware that he’s only arriving now because the baddies had prior captured him and locked him onto the outside door of a Bullet Train as a weird form of execution while they continued their evil master plan) and a net full of garlic that invariably explain his escape, and as he rushes towards the enormous nuclear device and releases the damsel in distress from her chains, strapped to said explosive as he disarms it on the very last second of the timer and saves the city (and therein the world), he’ll make some apologetics for being late and she’ll jump into his arms “better late than never!”.

Now I have to disagree with this because he wasn’t late.  In fact, I’d personally say he was jus’ in the nick of time!

Let’s revisit that scenario, but this time he’s actually late: he kicks the door down, the blood, train door and net full of garlic and gives his hero pose before realising that the clock is already on that key last second; if he were there he would be able to click his fingers and disarm it, but alas the travel time between the door and the explosive is frightfully longer than a nanosecond so all he can do is watch the bomb go boom and his damsel go dead….and himself, the city and the world.  Better late than never, you ask yourself?  Naw, I reckon you’d have been better off ditchin’ that city and gettin’ in the way of the rest of the baddies plan and savin’ the rest of the world.  Bein’ late really did you no favours there; never bein’ there at all, however, would have had more benefit.

However, after all that, there’s always the situations that beckon more thought, such as knowing that you’ll be late for your wedding…your bride-to-be might not quite be so understanding and thank you for at least showing up at all, but not showing up may invoke a much bloodier response, so you can’t really say that it applies or doesn’t apply to that situation (or certainly not a generic situation with arbitrary faces; maybe your wife thinks you being late for things is fashionable and cute, maybe you just ruined her life) so it’s hard to really put the phrase into a better context that would be more universally correct.  Perhaps “This time at least it was better than never, but thank shit it wasn’t one of those times that I’d have been better off not botherin’ at all, eh?” but that sounds rather wordy…

I guess if I had to summarise, I’d say the moral of this story would be a simple: “think before you speak“, but boy-oh-boy have I got problems with that statement, too….

Transformice; Satire with a Side of Cheese

http://www.transformice.com/en

Transformice is the newest browser game I’ve discovered while slacking in college, since almost every class we’re in is computer work and this game is easy to get everyone around you involved in game with a very simply room system for games.

Anyhoo, the premise of the game is equally as simple: get the cheese and get to the mousehole to escape to safety.  Of course, it’s not quite as simple as it sounds, having dozens (at least) of different maps after each level, time limits and a myriad of obstacle courses designed to prevent you and your team from surviving.  More often than not you will require the assistance of a selected Shaman mouse to add walking boards, boxes to climb on and carry people above with the aid of balloons.  The shaman will change each map and sometimes even have two of them pitted against each other to recruit the rest of the team to their mousehole.

By this point it probably sounds like numerous dungeon-crawling side-scrollin’ platformer strategy games that are already out there, but the challenge and the most interesting point to me comes with the fact that you usually are surrounded by two dozen others in an otherwise quite cramped environment.  There will be countless times that everyone will have to work together to some degree to prevent see-saws from falling off of a balancing point and not only killing half the people but making success impossible for the survivors.  Teamwork you say, on an online game?  It’s come to be expected, but with time limits and “1st place”s being recorded on everyone’s personal profile and no real incentive to help out your comrades, the teamwork issue suddenly becomes very tricky.

Now I’m sure it sounds like I’m jus’ givin’ a review of the game, and I guess I am but that’s mainly to explain what the game is about and how it works so that the rest of the post isn’t completely without context or comprehension.

The best way I can describe the feeling of playing this game is as a free-for-all team effort.  With old and new players mixed up in a mash of maps that escapes numbers (due to many being created and submitted by users constantly) there is never a true sense of a collective understanding of what to do and where to go, especially if the Shaman is inexperienced and not yet mastered the complicated tools at his disposal, the situation easily becomes blind leading the blind.  What interests me is the way that this game has the uncanny ability to really show the hive mind mentality people have.  When the goal is clear, everyone will charge in one fluid mousey swarm towards it, but when the goal isn’t so clear (maybe there’s two paths or two Shamans vying for your attention) the swarm doesn’t split up and go two ways, it tends to just mull around in circles following each other waiting for an answer to be given to them and should no answer arise the swarm tends to meet a hairy demise.

Individual thinking is so easily removed from everyone who isn’t already certain on what they’re doing (long time game veterans who are familiar with the map and rushing for the 1st place spot, for example), leaving everyone else following the others for answers, even if it is the lemming effect of walking off of cliffs and doing something that you know will result in death, such as jumping on a map that has huge “NO JUMP” letters plastered on the ground where you walk; nearly half the people on that map suffered an aerial death above the rest of us who had held ourselves back from blindly following and adhered to commands of the map.

I don’t know if the developers of the game realised this when they had released it, but it’s something that screams out to me in every map of the game I play and can’t help but thinking there was something intention behind it due to the fact that instead of tiny people they’ve given the persona’s of the characters as cute, harmless wee mindless mice that will blindly charge en masse if they see everyone else doing it, not even questioning whether it’s safe or not, even down to the very detail that the main logo on the main page is off the Shaman casting a spell and all the mice around him staring uncertainly at him waiting for answers.

Of course it could be entirely accidental, having sheep as a more fitting choice (then again they could have decided that sheep would be too obvious; who knows?) but it’s the leader of the pack that really turns the game into something to have a good laugh about.  On the missions where the answers are less obvious the group of mice will all stand around staring blankly until one bold mouse will take a brave step towards the possible solution and, should he choose correctly, the group will immediately charge along with him, but should he choose incorrectly and fall to his death below, the answer rarely becomes more clear (which is odd, considering there’s not often more than two paths to take) or, as said before, you might have ten others jump in behind him without even waiting to see if it worked or not.

I find it fascinating watching what happens and being so easily sucked into it myself, realising that I’m in the middle of the crowd only moving left instead of right because everyone else is, praying to my mouse-flavoured pixels that nothing fatal will be waiting for me.  Personally, I think all of that is exactly what makes the game fun…am I just bein’ example to prove my point?  Possibly.  Will it stop me continuing to be the very hive minded human-mouse that I’m here looking down upon?

Bloody doubtful.

New program time again…

Well…same story as before, really.  I originally made an account on another site just for the sake of givin’ me an outage to ramble or bitch and another medium through which I could talk to myself.  First one I didn’t like very quickly because 60% of the screen was margins and just pissed me off at how much space was pointlessly wasted.  Was at the awesomely named Vox before now but alas it’s on its deathbed for one reason or another.  After the amount of time it took me to even find, like and learn how to use Vox I reckoned I’d never bother findin’ another one again but wee Shutters flew over here and telt me to come too so thunk I’d try it out, albeit am confused to shit already.

I heard the words “import blogs” and my head just about exploded at the thought, so will instead just use my .txt backups and start postin’ them hither when I feel more like it.  For now I’mma just have a wee gander at the site and try to learn a bit more before bein’ distracted by college work again!