Cross Stinging Reality C2

Clothes

2008-11-17T02:47:11Z

Behind me are bags of shirts that came from Pac-Sun, American Eagle, and Old Navy. Yes, they're my shirts, and it was at my father's behest that my cousin, Jen, take me up to Toms River to get them.

As a male, I find it hard to fathom why women like to shop. There's the argument that dressing up dolls has manifested itself in them after ten or so years, which for the sake of this entry I am going to assume. Indeed, it was with no regard to the clothes I recently washed after a two-week laundry cycle and wear when I'm not working, and that the shirts I wear to work are given to me by Acme corporate. In the winter months, I have no use for more clothes unless some have torn apart or gotten too small. Yesterday's expenditure of over $200 on clothes from the three aforementioned stores more than makes up for these shortcomings — a waste of money and an example of horrible timing.

The day before began innocuously enough — I went to visit Jen in the hopes of meeting some of her friends, which I did at the Applebee's in Manahawkin. The next day we were supposed to go there again at the same time, but due to some people falling ill or not being allowed to go, it ended up being me alone with Jen and her friend at the Ocean County Mall, trying to guess which clothes would suit me best:

The stores I went to, with the exception of Pac-Sun, have a habit of acknowledging themselves on their clothes, which is a decent thing to wear if you're a girl but a warning sign to the community if you're of the opposite gender. I met one guy over the summer who happened to be gay and leant heavily toward Aéropostale — to be fair, this brand is associated more with girls whilst American Eagle and Old Navy lend themselves enough to rustic atmospheres. This aside, I hate having writing on my clothes — I don't intend on being a billboard for a company; much less do I like having symbols or cult designs on them.
I got a lot of thermals. They work, since the heat in this room is being controlled to conserve energy, so they at least are practical. The brand-name shirts I got, though, were purely to appease the gods.

If there's anything I need right now, though, they are twelve hours of precious sleep, a pair of better work slacks, and a washer and dryer for my room instead of queuing for the ones that exist for the other five members of my family. I don't need to stave it off by buying more clothes, and it seems that that's all that happened.

Or I could just use my own money to root out summer clothes on my own and throw what I have accumulated on the top wire shelf out. I have two other trash bags to go, too.

Obligatory work update

2008-10-28T05:04:58Z

Yes, I'm still a cashier.

No, I'm not going to mark down your candy bar to one cent. Acme, which acquired the store I worked for in January, brought in a more demanding atmosphere. I don't know if it was the management changing or the quality of the store going steadily downhill, but I feel different. A lot different.

As I reported in an old entry, I was a cashier at a supermarket called Shop 'n Bag (an alter ego of Thriftway, which a customer referred it to today). Up until the summer of 2007, I did very little else than work the cash register and fold up paper-and-plastic bags, due to my runaway attachment to one task and one task only. From then until the ultimate takeover by Supervalu, which was supplying food to us from May 2006 to December 2006 (during which time we were known as Brigantine Supermarket), I got to push carts and put away unwanted items. I initially got into these side tasks thinking, on my father's advice, that I needed to 'broaden my horizons', and expected little more than what I was doing now when I signed on as a cashier when Acme had us reapply.

The truth is, however, I'm doing a lot more. And I actually like cleaning, doing maintenance, and pushing carts more than I like working the register. There are two reasons I can think of:

I do not like change. Because the store is much more active and the stores are encouraged to keep everyone busy whilst the lines are short, cashiers are sent off to do scrubbing or trash removal. For me in particular, being sent back to register during a customer surge is horrible. I started the task in the hopes of finishing it and commending myself on a job well done, and I expected to finish it, and my frustration at never getting the chance shows in my communication with the customer; what would have been a lively 'hello' in the aisles when a customer approached to learn where to find an item became a meagre grunt in acknowledgement when asking for their loyalty card or announcing their coupons. I've also taken my anger out on a manager once over this fact; it took a full day to recover.
Under the management preceding Acme, the store was dirty. There were not as many people cleaning as there were under Acme (since there were no dedicated carryout or bagger positions, the holders of said posts being available for menial tasks). As a bagger, which I was for the past few weeks, I actually got to clean up the store and make things look nice for customers. When a customer is happy to find something on the shelf or have the terms of a sale explained, I'm happy.

Matt, the manager of the store who also runs Acme's Somers Point location, can be a demanding person, although he means well. If there's any inspiration for me to go anywhere in the company, provided I stay there long enough, I'll have to credit him. I feel bad, though, that for all he's had me do with the physical upkeep, my room is still a mess with wires, cables, magazines and union newsletters on the floor and my clothes unfolded. I'm glad he's never over at my house, at the very least.

BACK TO WORK SPECIAL: Sharia law in the UK?

2008-02-08T03:08:49Z

Yep, back to blogging, I guess.

No doubt queasy after a car bomb hitting an airport and a crazy cleric now being extradited to the US for inciting violence, the Archbishop of Canterbury has now suggested that the UK would benefit from having a rudimentary Sharia law system by which Muslims could abide. Theoretically, a Muslim could petition for divorce in a Sharia court in the UK if his or her spouse hasn't been faithful, or custody could be granted as per the religion of the parents.

I admire the decision — but it's a step in the wrong direction. The only ones who would benefit from the existence of an Islamic legal system to sit side-by-side with a universal law system would be the extremists.

Even in Islamic countries, Sharia law is nearing its shelf life; the only ones benefiting from such systems are the politicians, clerics, and radicals. In Iran, where homosexuality is a capital crime, there has been legislation to insure sex change surgery. In Jordan, even the queen doesn't wear a headscarf. And the presidential administration of Abdullah Gül and his AKP party has thus far yielded none of the religious reform in Turkey that the military feared would happen. Even among Muslims I have met here in the US, religion is a private matter and nothing to shove down the hatch. For most civilian Muslims, it seems that even Sharia law would not work out very well, and for the rest it would only be a show of bigotry no matter who looks at it.

And what is the point of having two legal systems in a country? It could be easy to switch affiliation if you're homophobic and want your gay son cut off from the rest of the family, even if you're not Muslim; you could (at risk of being charged with fraud) take it out in a Sharia court without anybody batting an eye. Most of the Muslims who enter the UK (or the US) and apply for citizenship know that everything will fall apart for them at first, as the laws in their home country, no doubt bearing the remnants of religion, will probably no longer apply. If you immigrate, you follow the rules of your new home. If it's something that borders on humanitarian question, you might have a case, but if it is a religion that you believe supersedes the law of the land, you will have to adapt. (This isn't exclusively for immigrants, for that matter; I still have my eye on the holy-rollers.)

Not bad for a few months of being away from the blog, but damn it, it's good to be back.

The sorry state of the union

2007-10-24T03:51:46Z

As the clock winds down on Bush's presidency, the United States undoubtedly will need to consider its options on how to carry on once he's left and who of all people would do it the best. The war in Iraq was a costly mistake, global warming is making waves (pun intended) across the political spectrum, and traditional values are the foci of concern. With these issues coming to a head as the spectre of Islamist-fuelled Armageddon looms, we have been wishing, hoping, and praying for someone to see us out without bumbling through.

What we got were rock stars.

Ladies and gentlemen of the United States: Those of you over the age of eighteen and registered to vote will unwittingly make a lot of choices when you cast your vote. Some, like myself, are wise enough to watch the news every so often and give thought to who the candidates really are. And I've realised that the lot we have offer little promise. Right now we have Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and others hogging the limelight, at least four of whom have attained rock star status through either breaking the trend or just being too well known. Obama has only been a senator for two years, yet his status as an African-American* has people believing him to be the Saviour of the Democratic Party. Giuliani has been hailed a hero for his swift actions following 9/11. Clinton has kept a dizzyingly high profile ever since her husband was in the White House, and she would be the first female executive to run the United Sates if elected. Romney was known for mandating health insurance in Massachusetts. Thompson was an actor who played the role of an American president. Few are actually known for their credentials in government more than what the tabloids report.

Worst of all, many of the problems I see with this country seem to be gravely mishandled — government handouts (tax-and-spend liberalism in a nutshell), the Islamism situation in the Middle East, and personal responsibilities. Many of these problems politicians skirt around just to get a voting base or two. However, the public has realised that pandering to a voting base will solve nothing. In order to get these issues down, you need to use your head:

Government handouts

Had I posted, say, six months earlier, I would have cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. One of her plans is to give each child $5,000 plus interest to pay college tuition or perhaps a mortgage. However, I now realise that that money is just a lump sum; it's not going to be earmarked for anything, so it can be spent willy-nilly if desired. The same I say for a Labour Party initiative to give £200 to each pregnant woman in the hopes that she'll eat well: Even though she'll have to see an obstetrician to get the grant, the money's not going to be earmarked. This means that the beneficiary could just dip into the account and cash out for booze and drugs. For the full gist of this argument, I refer you to the Have Your Say page on the subject; to summarise, with the poor and undereducated having more and more kids and seeing sex as a form of recreation, what better way to get money to blow on drugs or an expensive television set than to get knocked up?

Right now, people in the US on low incomes but with large families can use food stamp cards** or, if they're pregnant or their child is under the age of five, WIC checks to cover the cost of food. As a supermarket cashier, I see first-hand the most common abuse of the food benefits system: Even though they're given cash in the hopes that it'll go toward food that's actually good for them, not only do recipients not keep track of how much they're getting before they reach the till, but they use their credits on junk food. Instead of buying fruits, bread, milk, cereals, or the other basics for cooking and preparing, they opt for sugary juices, candy, and chips, much of which is subject to tax in New Jersey because of their content.

Solution: The WIC programme is nearly scotch-free because of its strict regulations on what can be bought. Such restrictions should also apply to food stamps. As a start, any food that can be taxed for its sugar content or lack of nutrition, i.e. soda or sweets, should not be covered by food stamps. Then, you move on to anything with more than 1 gram of trans fat per serving, or foods with high levels of sodium or carbohydrates (excluding fiber). Either way, only healthy foods should be eligible; if the parents want to buy soda or Li'l Hugs for their kids, they should work for it. That way, not only do the kids start to realise what little nutrition such things have anyway, but you also advance your assault on obesity.

Islamism

Conservatives love to point out that Islam isn't quite the loving and peaceful religion it's purported to be. Add to the mix the fact that most of said conservatives are Christian. The result is the notion that Islam is a spectre that needs to be vanquished in the name of Jesus Christ.

One thing is correct: Islam isn't exactly a peaceful religion — when the Qu'ran is taken to heart. But Christianity has been the same way — before World War I. From the inception of the Catholic Church to World War I, Europe was embroiled in religious warfare, and all partakers were Christian. The first wars — the Crusades — were fought for control of Jerusalem, as the Christians and Muslims had spiritual stake in the city. Eventually the Syrian sultan Saladin defeated a crusade led by King Richard, but he opened the city to Christian pilgrims.

Then came Martin Luther. As soon as he nailed the Ninety-Five Theses, Europe was up in arms, with the Catholic Church struggling to counter the newly-conceived Protestant movement. For hundreds of years, the struggle for ideological control of Europe would carry on. In fact, the United States was founded on principles that its founders learnt from the warfare in Europe: People needed their freedom of religion, press, speech, assembly, and redress, which no religious faction in Europe could offer. The whole point was to avoid religious and ideological oligarchy — a point many Christians in this country fail to realise as they champion those who champion 'traditional family values'.

The Middle East has been fraught with religious warfare long before Europe has — from the death of Muhammad's grandson. One group thought the next holy ruler had to be a direct descendant of Muhammad — the Shi'as. The other, the Sunnis, considered any righteous person eligible. They have been fighting ever since they split over whom should be the unifying force, trading blows to push what they believe is true Islam. This has only been aggravated with the discovery of oil, a commodity the West has pursued ever since the birth of the automobile.

It would eventually take two world wars and a Holocaust to slap Europe awake to realise that religious rule was not the answer.

Solution: The Middle East needs a World War of its own — and the West must stay out. First thing to do would be to finish up what we need to do in Iraq and withdraw our troops gradually. Then, we sit back and watch the sparks fly as the Muslims kill each other off in the name of the Qu'ran. Soon, once their populations have dwindled and their economies have been torn to bits, they'll come out like Europe.

'Family values'

Is the United States a 'Christian country'? Is it based on the 'family'? Those who feel sentimental would be quick to say yes to either question. Many groups, such as the Family Research Council, want a country to which 'traditional family values' are central; to do this, they say, a Biblical code should be implemented. The argument here is that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, suggested by the presence of terminology such as 'our Creator' and 'divine Providence' in the Declaration of Independence. It should be considered, though, that such language was the best to be had in the day; you didn't have science, and you needed some outlet for ideas. Even Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, was atheist; the truth was that the terms so lovingly cited by the Christian right were purely metaphorical.

As stated above, the whole idea behind the Constitution was to distance the country from religious oligarchy. The Christian government these conservative groups want so badly simply defeats the point of the nation's existence. If you're not convinced, examine the row in the Anglican Church over the consecration of gays. When the Episcopal Church, the American arm of the Anglican Church, consecrated the openly gay Gene Robinson, Anglican factions in Africa cried foul. Last year, members of the Church met in Tanzania and gave the Episcopal Church an ultimatum: Stop dealing with gays or get out. If that's not enough, imagine that you find in the Bible cause to treat gays as your equal and the country's laws prohibit homosexuality — you'll have a rough time gaining a following. Even the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints faces pressure, even after the Short Creek fiasco, because of their supposedly divine support of polygamy, counter to federal law still supported by the pro-family lot. The point is that running a Christian nation would only cause friction through the many denominations present in the country who claim that their way is the way to go.

The issue of family is, in effect, something that the government should have no business in. What defines the family is something that the people should decide on their own terms — it is not to be dictated by law. We all know by now that the 'family' the Family Research Council has in mind consists of a bundle of children raised in a household supported by a man married to one woman. This is a decent family — for those kind of Christians. However, you have homosexuals who, bereft of attraction to the opposite sex, miss out on the love said to be needed to keep a household together. These people would love to have their own children themselves, but at the same time they don't find a woman that appealing. Imagine the case of former New Jersey governor James McGreevey: He seemed to be this happily married family man, with a wife and kids. As soon as lover Golan Cipel threatened to expose him for his vapid appointment to the state's homeland security department, the house of cards collapsed, and Dina Matos McGreevey ended up demanding hefty amounts in alimony. McGreevey and Cipel have now entered a civil union, and I can bet that one of the things on their mind is raising a few kids of their own.

If you need a more convincing argument: China has a policy that requires that families have no more than one child. This has resulted in a severe disproportion of males over females, even after gender selection has been outlawed. If you abhor the government there taking control of families, why would you want it over here?

Solution: The answer to the two questions is no. For my full take on abortion and same-sex marriage, both of which I support, I refer you to my televangelism piece. The point is that the family is only what the ones involved make it out to be. Christians can raise their families as James Dobson recommends; that's their choice. They cannot, however, impose this on those who don't agree with Dobson or his so-called research council.

* Obama's father was Kenyan. When I say 'black', I refer to African-Americans who have American lineage going back to times of slavery.

** Electronic food stamps were introduced after paper food stamps found themselves on the black market, usually pawned or exchanged for drugs.

speaks

2007-10-03T02:57:46Z

Given the many times I have tried to speak on the subject of my fights on the Internet — including the one with the Pokémon Community, you would have thought that I would have heeded the final words of Arcanine: ‘Get a life CW.’ This marked the last post I wrote before I wrote a message to Articuno Avianos to remove my account from PC through illegal access to the administrator control panel — I gave Lightning a copy of the PM, and I was banned for ‘instigating a severe hack threat’. This unceremonious expulsion, which followed six months of wrangling for my Other Voting Polls position back, led me to believe that I, in all respects, had just proven that I had no consideration for what others thought, and I have been wallowing ever since.

Little did I know....

The Composition lesson I had in college today involved an essay called 'Caring for your Introvert', written by a man who considers himself an introvert over the fact that he wishes to have his time alone. He wrote of introverts that ‘to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating’, and extroverts ‘are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone’. He also debunks popular speculation that introverts are arrogant, stating that ‘this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts’. In other words, an introvert would rather be alone for some time, but they are just as functional as extroverts in large social scenes, albeit for a shorter time.

Of all the criticism I have received on the home front and on the Internet, you would figure that my recoiling would be the result of introverted tendencies. I even thought this was so, inferring from my imbalanced attention to my own needs. I may be on the computer a lot — but I have WLM open whenever possible, ready to receive IMs at any moment, and I normally find myself on a message board. And I have said from time to time that I loved attending the youth summits in Rhode Island due to the fact that you’re almost invariably around other students, and talking to them even if you have absolutely nothing in common.

After reading Jonathan Rauch’s screed, I saw all this in a new light — I am an extrovert.

Here’s the truth, folks, and it took me a long time and a lot of pain to come to this conclusion. The fights I have had were not over a mod spot, although I can attribute my clinging to the post as a result of Asperger’s syndrome. Rather, it is the fact that the loss of the position, which is incalculably worsened by the ban, effectively cuts me off from the other members, and I’m reduced to hearing what others have to say only when they send me a message on WLM or post on their LiveJournal or Facebook blogs. Indeed, now that I’ve come to realise my status as an extrovert beleaguered by Asperger’s syndrome, I’ve seen the company of members as infinitely more valuable. Indeed, I’ve felt that just mentioning and making it clear that I was an ‘aspie’ — rather than suppressing the fact, dismissing it as a sympathy hook — could have saved the situation (yet as far as Andy personally goes, I doubt he’d have any sympathy, given his overall attitude — and possibly the fact that he was homeschooled and most likely sheltered from ‘wayward’ society).

I’ve had to grapple with this practically since I began attending school in Brigantine. It was sometime in elementary school when I realised that my intelligence amounted to admiration from others, including teachers themselves. I have said before that I would brag about how I could multiply and divide and the majority of the third-graders had yet to learn it — that in particular was successfully muted when, as challenge, my teacher handed me an advanced multiplication sheet and I cringed in fear, and then the following year when I turned up a ‘dismal’ C in the first grading quarter. I also remember memorising the names of the presidents of the United States, but bragging about it led to the current stops on the street from people who just want to use me as a walking almanac. I would also use big words — Roget’s Thesaurus put an end to that. While I’m sure it’s nature for kids my age to brag about things other kids don’t have, I’ve seen mine to be acquired other than material; one kid could brag that he had a PSP whereas I ‘just’ had a Nintendo DS, whilst I’d counter that he couldn’t name the book of the Bible from which he’d draw his conclusion that Adam and Eve spurned humankind*.

The intelligence thing, as can be inferred from the above, was invariably coupled with social crutching. I began to depend on the fact that I had a photographic memory and could list things for my social needs. In middle school you could see me hanging out outside kids’ homes around a basketball net, although I wasn’t necessarily inclined to partake in the sport; being smart and well-known was enough in their eyes to validate my attendance. I would eventually make the cut for a trivia team called Think Day, which eventually competed in a gym hall at a high school in Linwood, but I was too confident; we ended up in eighth place after I hijacked many of the questions (although the position was still respectable as there were thirty teams present, and, looking through school report cards later in my life, many of the questions asked would stump most students at higher levels of public education). Through the years, my grades would not be very exceptional; I even ran the risk of failure twice. Intelligence, I would later learn, did not equate to brains or responsibility; it was merely the ability to figure things out from the raw, and nothing more.

Then I learnt that I had Asperger’s syndrome.

Reading books on the disorder explained most, if not all, of what I needed to know — I was insanely intelligent, but responsibility and social skills were impedimenta. At first it didn’t seem to faze me in school, but it soon sent my perfect, delicately balanced world crashing down during high school. I met a student, who came to resent my intelligence, and I framed him for deletion of school files; we did not reconcile until graduation. I tried to go for the method of passing at minimum to save face until I met my physics teacher — who turned out to be my uncle; his class proved to be the hardest, and I credit my protection from a failing grade — and being the top student in his class the following quarter — to doing mountains of extra credit.

It was also in high school that I met the Internet. The first forum I joined, as you know, was PKMN.NET**. Being a rising SuperCheats.com star, I expected them to know who Cross Stinger was — but after snapping over a prank censorship of the word ‘Muuma’ and increased unwelcome involvement with staff affairs, I was forced to re-examine who I was. Even when I vowed to start anew at the Pokémon Community, I expected people to recognise me; they didn’t until Wikipedia got involved, and that, coupled with being promoted to moderator over those circumstances, brought me into the chaotic world of PC staff drama, which I lived off as someone still recovering from railing against Jeroen the previous year. In the end it was quarrelling over how the forums should be run and grumbling over my reduced seniority as moderator of Other Voting Polls — being invited to staff chats satisfied my social need but led to me feeling horrible once the chat finished, as I would be hard-pressed to mutter anything good and would eventually give Andy the impression that I was a stuck-up suck up who was rigidly against what Encyclopedia Dramatica would call ‘lulz’.

Whatever the case, I’ve seen this today as a warning that I would have to keep my mouth shut about how I was better in order to move on; in fact, I still think about the past and hold it tantamount to the present and future, as I believe that these three things shape the human psyche. I’m sure that had I refused to state unequivocally that Andy was right on the n00bs thing, I would have survived — yet at the same time I wonder whether ignoring the Wikipedia incident altogether would have made things a little easier. I’m sure that had I not spoken out against pairing and ‘families’, I would have had a lot more dignity engaging in it two months after I was given the mod job (which means Andy pulled the ‘paired up just to get modded’ assumption right out of his ass). The truth, ladies and gentlemen, is not necessarily that I should have just kept my mouth shut and been more consistent — I should have tried to look for the positives of families and pairing up, and probably left Kelsey alone as she genuinely had a relationship with Jorge.

And for all I have come to beforehand, I always feel as if I cannot bring myself to act upon these emotions. I hold the past in high regard, in an attempt to make myself clean. Why can I not just live with the errors I've made? The fact is that I have never had incentive to do so. More accurately, if a grudge I have is considered to be obsolete by most, I will not give up until an official announcement is made. That is why I have had so much emphasis on forgiveness all this time.

I should have said this as soon as I set foot on the Internets — I have Asperger’s syndrome, and I am prone to explode if I feel alone or miserable. This is how I am. I might never change that.

* Observing as a Protestant growing up in a Catholic and Republican town, it's hard for any kid to say otherwise, unless they're Indian. I am not a creationist, and I respect the beliefs of those who are, but arguing over it on the street in front of the arcade when you're under 25 — actually, at any age — is just silly.
** I joined PKMN.NET on 7 July 2004. The SuperCheats forums did not come online until 31 August 2004.

Encyclopedia Dramatica

2007-09-26T03:45:23Z

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/ (Link not safe for work)

I have a confession to make: While I have decided to venture into smilie territory, I will not use textspeak, and I'm not fond of using FAIL — as with any other Internet quip like 'r0xx0rz' or 'haX0r', unless I'm using them in a context that defames such users except in the case of Fark.com). As someone who has come to revile the evils of the Internet as far as attention and drama are concerned, one site that has come to my attention is Encyclopedia Dramatica, a compendium of Internet fandoms, quips, trends, and insanity. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the reason things like Schadenfreude and FAIL exist — to be preserved and consecrated in this little library.

I'll seize the opportunity to capitalise on those who are amazed to find that it rests on a wiki by noting the type of articles that are written as to emphasise the beauty of the lexicon they know. Rule 34 is quick to have raw porn, as does the entry for 'rape', and even the one for 'Pokémon'; it even has a longer screed on Chris Hansen ('Why don't you have a seat?') and Dateline: To Catch a Predator than Wikipedia can muster. The Guardian has even written an article about the tl;dr (too long; didn't read) entry, which, appropriately is filled with incoherently placed texts. True, a lot of it can be offensive, but when it comes down to it, the collection of quips and expressions this encyclopaedia has to offer leads people to decide whether it would be a good thing to have their own little trend immortalised there or a bad thing to have rude anecdotes made about you.

Of course, following a ban from the Pokémon Community, I end up being mentioned on its 'Pokecommunity' entry, which echoes the little Wikipedia tiff last year. No matter, the article might be thrown anyway given their policy regarding Exhibits A through D.

Banjo-Kazooie fanfic

2007-09-25T00:33:01Z

In an attempt to get this journal more active and to bring more people in, I've decided to post what I have of a fanfic. One of the Banjo-Kazooie games. And I want all of you to download this (a PDF file) and review it. Any comments, complaints, death threats, I'd like to see them all.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2um0txpym3k

What Do You Have To Say? - Music: My First Favorite Band

2007-09-12T02:56:49Z

What was the first band you became a fan of?

Brought to you by HP | Contest | Vote for Winners!

View 500 Answers

To be very fair, it was Fastball, purely since my father was hawking them ever since they released 'The Way'. The group remains one of my favourite bands, although as time has worn on I've preferred U2.

If I were to give a more truthful response, I'd have to say that I'm not really a fan of 'any' band — strictly speaking, I'm not a fanboy or a hawker. As someone with Asperger's syndrome, I've developed a preference to certain musical or vocal sequences, and ever since I got an iPod I've been delving into peer-to-peer networks just to find that one song with the certain musical sequence, and I've been playing songs from it as I ride in a car or bus, or walk to work. So a more accurate answer would be that I don't have a favourite band; it's just that I look for musical sequences.

Now if only I could get into blogging again. Ever since the Great Fallout, I've been short of ideas.

Tales from the Arcade IV: More smoking, with 100% more iPhone

2007-08-06T03:23:49Z

Three days ago, I finally got a mobile phone — an iPhone, that is. It set me back $200 out of pocket ($600 altogether, excluding plan, but my parents paid for part of it), and for the money I'm really enjoying it. What I do most of the time is use the Safari browser or run the camera.

It was yesterday, though, when I decided to take it to the public. Many people were fascinated, some downright jealous, ever since I decided to just take it outside. And yes, some kid made a point of using it to attract the attention of girls in the group. It happened, yes, but this kid dramatised any effect of taking your iPhone out and allowing someone to test it. Tonight, it was one of the talks of the group forming outside the arcade — aside, of course, from smoking. This time around, nearly everyone had graduated from the cigarette to some brand of flavoured cigar — and this time, my chest tightened when I came near some of the smokers, and whenever they tried to release the ash it came off in hot cinders and clouds of smoke, instead of the normal issuing streams.

Those who have read the previous Tales from the Arcade pieces will know that smoking has been a problem at the arcade. Back then, not many people, I'll admit, smoked — today, though, I saw so many smoke that many I suspected otherwise were in on it as well. One kid now had eyes so red it seemed as if he had been badly beaten up. Eventually the smoking offended two girls from northern New Jersey, and once they turned to avoid someone's explosion of ashes on the pavement, they all puffed away from them.

After my stomach began to tighten and the kids started moving to the convenience store to watch a fight, I just went home and took a shower. While Brigantine has had its share of druggies and chavs, it never occurred to me until tonight how common it was in this day and age, and how it's hardened into a social foundation. I have never smoked — I owe that to scary commercials and my participation at youth summits — and having to smell my acquaintances smoking irks me somewhat. I probably have less respect for under-age smokers — or smokers on the whole — than televangelists; anyone who engages in an act to undermine their lifespan in the name of acquaintance has little merit (no pun intended) in my book.

I wish I were Neal Boortz. He can criticise smokers on his show and feel good about it. Although I don't think it's always the case that it's the 'second time her prom dress has come off' if she's smoked during prom, but it makes a lot of sense.

Writer's Block: In The Money

2007-07-30T00:27:14Z

It's time I took on a new challenge: answering LiveJournal's Writer's Block questions. I know I have at least something hidden in the rubbish I'll someday have to put up.

If you won $100 this afternoon, what would you do with it?

I've been given $100 before, and it has invariably gone toward to Feed Max Before, During, and After Work Fund. That, of course, is only when given in straight cash, rather than a cheque; that cheque would go into the bank when I go to deposit my own pay cheque, and usually I'll take nothing out of it for the wallet.

Short response, but I guess they'll grow as time goes on.

God loves you, so send your money in today

2007-07-24T04:46:28Z

I dislike televangelists. Rather, I dislike the picture of the Christian right they paint: a swath of people who believe the human is superior to other species due to their allegiance to a deity and their adherence to a set of texts sent down from said deity.

Now, don't get me wrong here: I have respect for all people of any religion in name. Further, half of my family are evangelical, and I love them very much and appreciate what they do for me. However, I believe that if someone decides to follow a man — or woman — on television because of their supposed representation of God, they end up worshipping the man representing God, not God. These representatives include Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, and Tim LaHaye (and did include Jerry Falwell and Tammy Faye Messner), who all have started as people with faith but turned into veritable megalomaniacs, many of them amassing huge fortunes as a result of running huge ministries or even television stations. While I do not approve of the practices leading up to this, as I will explain later, it should be considered that the message they at first tried to put out was indeed of good faith, yet power and fame simply corrupted them.

Evangelism as a media genre can be put back arguably as far as Charles Coughlin's radio programme, broadcast in the days of Franklin Roosevelt, in which he angered several religious audiences with anti-Semitic comments until, after World War II and failed attempts by the government to control him, a Detroit priest ordered him off the air. The first time money became involved, though, may have been a plea from Pat Robertson to keep his television station at the time, WYAH-TV, which resulted in a telethon that still continues today on its successor — the Christian Broadcasting Network — and many other religious stations, first starting with $10 donations from a benchmark of 700 donors a month (hence the name of the flagship programme, The 700 Club). The telethon, which was enough to keep the station afloat, pales in comparison to the telethons still held on Trinity Broadcasting Network's Praise the Lord programme. TBN, in effect, was formed when Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker broke with CBN, but they eventually left TBN alone and started the PTL network, which would soon become infamous for the failure of a Christian theme park, the imprisonment of Jim Bakker for tax evasion, and his affair with a secretary that he tried to settle with $250,000.

TBN, under the direction of Paul and Jan Crouch, has become probably the largest religious television network in the nation, with revenues upward of $150 million annually. However, much of the money any such network seems to make goes toward the luxurious lifestyle of the hosts. Indeed, according to Business 2.0's Dumbest Moments in Business History, Bakker had diverted more than $3.7 million in revenue for personal issues, including an air-conditioned doghouse. Whatever the money is specifically used for, the fact that the bulk of it comes out of the pockets of viewers as 'donations' is unsettling in the least. Rather than live out as a pay-per-view programme offered with, say, DirecTV, people have to donate to the station. In theory, donating is good — but what if, Chris Hedges asked in his book, American Fascists, you start demanding $1000 or more at a time? You claim that 'you are robbing God', and that 'it is Your show, Your airwaves'. To me, that sounds much like extortion, seeing as no deity like the one they claim to represent would actually need money. Much of money inevitably goes to Crouch or whomever is running the station, and to see them spend an excessive amount of money on a jet plane and several mansions, not to mention cosmetic surgery — rather than give some money to actual charities and keep a modest sum — is nothing short of incensing, and even more so when you back up such opulence as a 'gift from God' for running a ministry.

If money is enough to incense me, I can't bear to think of how awful it is to couple it with the constant purporting that God wants the financial best for His followers. On a Detroit News article that is no longer online, a church pastor evidently got to write off a mansion as a donation from members of his church, which subscribed to the 'Gospel of Wealth', a system of Christian beliefs that come to the conclusion that God wants followers to be as wealthy as possible. There's a little problem with that, however:

And as he was going forth into the way, there ran one to him, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good save one, even God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor thy father and mother. And he said unto him, Teacher, all these things have I observed from my youth. And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me. But his countenance fell at the saying, and he went away sorrowful: for he was one that had great possessions. And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:17-25 ASV)

It seems as if Jesus didn't see wealth as necessarily a qualification for getting into heaven; rather, it seems as if he wanted the rich man to be generous to the poor as he certainly had the resources to do so. While it is true that the religious right does tend to give more to charity than liberals and the secular (even when donations to organisations such as TBN are factored out), there are some who, despite the great trend, believe that an expanse of wealth and power is acceptable by God regardless of where it goes. The Gospel of Wealth, therefore, probably isn't a very good interpretation of what should be done on the part of Christians.

Even more harrowing is the thought of not wealth alone, but power — over the government. We see it today, with states passing laws forbidding same-sex couples from marrying, apparently in the light of a Massachusetts ruling that allowed them to do so. Last year, South Dakota even tempted Roe v Wade by banning abortion altogether except in cases in which the mother's life was at risk, even disallowing exceptions for rape and incest. It's unfathomable to me how this could have been the result of a bloc bred on the teachings of pastors in the media — we have the Moral Majority, founded by Jerry Falwell in the hopes of creating a voting base of people opposed to specific or implied actions prohibited in the pages of the Bible. The resulting voting base took credit for putting Ronald Reagan in power, and they almost certainly helped both Bushes enter office. The latter Bush, turned to when America was attacked on 11 September 2001, turned out to be one to cause mayhem in the moral sphere — not to mention Iraq — based on his evangelical beliefs, egged on by religious Republicans and arguably the forces of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Indeed, the latter was featured on The 700 Club two days after the attacks to give his analysis (click the video link below the picture of his face) of what caused it — and it had nothing to do with militant Arab fundamentalists:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularise America — I point the finger in their face and say, you helped this happen.

Eventually Robertson, who said 'Well, I totally concur', recanted. All the same, the attack was caused by militant Arab fundamentalists — and it seems to me that remarks like this could have been the very fuel needed for such an attack. When it gets down to it, these fundamentalists and these beacons of the Christian right are quite the same in their steadfast intolerance for even other religions. That's what the whole mess in the Middle East is over, after all.

While we're on the subject of gays and abortionists, I might as well say what I believe. People like Falwell will use a prohibition in Leviticus as well as Paul's letter to the Romans* to justify such inconvenience to gays. That's fine to me — but it's not fine when rigid interpretations make their way into the government of a free society. The decision that homosexuality is a sin is in the moral sphere, something a straight or gay person alike might see as a hindrance or a sign of weakness. But marriage is a different issue, one that carries legal consequence. I believe that the government has no responsibility to rule on strictly moral affairs as homosexuality when it occurs in the bedroom; as such, denying a couple a legal right based on an individual, moral interpretation is downright wrong. Although marriage has always been sacrosanct in many religions, even as the union of one man and one woman, I do not see this having much validity when applied to legal statutes that apply to all people regardless of their sexual orientation — if marriage is a legal term, I say let same-sex couples marry.

As such, I am adamantly pro-choice. I realise there are many couples who want to have a child and place a value on the foetus any woman is carrying, but this doesn't necessarily apply to them since they want the child. There are some out there who are brave enough to pull through with raising a child even if they were raped — this is not for them, either. The issue here really covers those who have sex as a form of recreation or trust, even outside marriage. On one hand you have the girl who was raped or was a victim of sexual abuse within the family, and on the other you have the girl who had sex with her boyfriend in which no condom was used or the condom or any other device failed. The latter case I do find a little immoral, but it happens either because of indifference to the situation or as a token of trust. In either case, if a pregnancy arises, it's ultimately the woman's decision whether to go on with the pregnancy and raise the child, or abort it. A pregnancy at a young age, while possible in older times, is made much more difficult by college and the possibility of a career (not to mention the scant availability of sitters). Indeed, in Steven Levitt's Freakonomics, the point is made that a child arising from an unwanted pregnancy and not given up for adoption most likely will grow up bearing the scars of his or her mother's resentment and turn to crime. Indeed, Levitt was criticised across the board when the point was made clear that legalised abortion was a major factor in the fall of crime in the 1990s despite apocalyptic predictions for the decade. I think the fact that a pregnancy forced upon by a moral interpretation of a foetus as a separate life — when it's not even counted in population and mortality records — will likely result in the child being raised in an environment conducive to resent and criminal behaviour is enough for me to say a woman should have the right to abort at any stage of pregnancy. Even if it is a little gross.

One of the people I met at the conference over last weekend was pressured into sex four times by a former boyfriend. At the conference, a boy she liked (I'm sketching here) rejected her because of her belief that she should have the right to abort should she find herself incapable of raising a child. She cried for a few minutes before her friend, a staff member, and I gathered around and dried the tears before resuming the water play.

Now, my aunt and uncle donate to CBN, and I have watched two episodes of The 700 Club at their house. The objective of the show, I will repeat, is to uplift viewers with miracles in others' lives, but when they begin political rhetoric — such as the talk on gays and abortion — things get ugly. I just hope there'll be someone who comes along and actually gives a decent ministry without forcing literal interpretations of the Bible on viewers. After all, humans did write the book — from their perception of the world, albeit with insight as to how God wanted the world to run — and humans are interpreting it.

* The last two paragraphs of the first chapter of Romans are a polemic on 'unnatural relations' leading to other sorts of sin, an allusion to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the book of Genesis. We'll assume for a second that the Bible is true: While the documentation of a gang of men wanting to draw other men out for forced sex has led literalistic Christians to say that homosexuality led to the collapse of Sodom, I believe that a collection of graver sins, or perhaps even the simple fact that these men just wanted to force sex on other men to exact misery, but not because of individual orientation, could have led God to supposedly destroy the city. Also, the Archbishop of Canterbury recently issued a statement accusing such Christians of ignoring what Paul wrote at the beginning of the second chapter, immediately after his polemic, invalidating man's right to judge others based on their sins due to this situation.

Obligatory Youth to Youth update

2007-07-23T14:53:16Z

Six youth summits. Four Youth to Youth summits. You would have thought that I would have become a moderator at one as I eventually gained — and lost — such respect at the Pokémon Community and other sites. This time, you're right: All through this conference, people have asked me to enlist in the conference administration. Apparently I can go straight in and then do Adult Staff duty the following year, or so they tell me. That I'll have to check on in March, when they say applications are going out.

This year, so much has happened that I now have to break it into segments. Unfortunately, there are no pictures; I didn't remember the camera. If you're new to this blog and are a little confused, you may want to read the accounts of 2006 and 2005.

Day one: Fe fi fo fum, we're kicking I-95's bum

On Thursday, I had to be up at 4.00am and hail a taxi since my parents couldn't wake up. A few kids — the ones I normally went with had gone to Costa Rica earlier in the month — were in the van, and the father of one of them was driving as the pastor had to be present for a summer bazaar. The father turned out to be very critical of New Jersey as far as laws go, and he was like me in the mind that more roads were needed if the Garden State Parkway was clogged up at 7.00am (although much of it was due to an accident in which the police cut traffic off to push a car across the carriageway). We managed to get to campus at 11.00am, an hour ahead of registration, and when the rush finally came I made sure to be one of the first to register for courses — a writing course, a class about foreign students trying to learn the native language, and a workshop on Internet safety.

This year was the twenty-fifth anniversary of Youth to Youth's operations, so the theme this time around was 'I Love The 80s', meaning that the opening ceremony would often be interrupted (as scripted) by Melissa, who was reprising her role in the Youth Staff, with blurbs about what happened in the year — 1982 — that Youth to Youth came into being. Once that finished, we had a small session in the Rotunda of Bryant University in which we tried to identify whose picture was posted on one of the huge screens (I was in the flicking roster but it never stopped on me).

Then came the first family group session. Once again, I was in Family Group 9, and I had the same Adult Staff representative. The group was also led by Ashley (whom I recognised as the one who did slam poetry the previous year) and included a military man who had been sent to evaluate the programme by some sort of youth agency, a girl who aspired to be a model, a Nigerian girl who taught us our little buzzword 'Amonge' (an Ibo greeting) and whom I believe also wanted to be a model, a guy born in Japan to Sri Lankan parents who was advised against flirting, and four others. We didn't play as many games as before, rather discussing the events that passed as well as our lives, yet when we did, it would be Indian Chief, Mafia, and two attempts at Ha, the first being in a circle when some objected to being laid down on during the first session and the second — producing worse success at going down the line — being held on the final day.

Then dinner came. While I admit I've been eating less these days, I helped myself to decently-sized meals all through the conference. I also was approached by a few people in Adult Staff to recommend applying for Administrative Staff, or the 'A-Team'. It turned out that in order to be on Adult Staff, I would either have to return once as an adult plebeian or go to the administrative level. (I heard a variety of stories, some saying I could join Adult Staff right away.) When the day comes — sometime in March, they tell me — I'll find the application to do so; I'm also guessing that it'll require driving.

As lunch was going on, so did some old favourite round games such as Ride That Pony. There was another game, Jigaloo, which I finally figured out: You stand in a circle and shake and clap, singing 'Jig-a-looo, jig-jig-a-loooo, hey [name]!' before the person they call from the circle steps forward and creates a jive for the others to repeat before the process starts over. Now, I had thought for a while that it would be silly of me to join such games, but the following presentation, led by Bill Cordes, challenged that. He came on-stage with an easel on which an arrangement of letters, YOGOWYPI, was written. He told the conference that it stood for 'You Only Get Out What You Put In' before leading them in a gibberish chant, which I came to realise meant that anyone not joining the mass in following obviously wasn't putting in what they expected to enjoy in it (I'll have more on that later):

Fe, fe fi, fe fi fo, fe fi fo fum! Kumalacha kumalacha kumala vista, no no no nacho vista, vista, vista! Isalini disalini oo ah ah malini acha kacha acha lacha oo ah ah....

Then, there was 'The Big Show'. Instead of it being a talent show, it was a game show that involved the whole congregation: We started by filling out and submitting a quiz with eight questions, and the one who got the most right won an iPod and those whose sheets were drawn before got conference memorabilia (I got another pouch). Eventually one was called up to face the presenter in a 'Let's Make a Deal' session: He offered her a box or five one-dollar banknotes. The audience at first urged her to choose the box, yet as the number of banknotes increased, she leant toward the banknotes — and ultimately accepted them over the box, which turned out to have a dollar's worth of pennies.

At the end of the day, we all returned to one dormitory hall. Since construction was taking place and some of the dorms were out of commission, we all had to take up residence in one hall, the boys on the lower two floors and girls on the upper floors. I ended up with the very same room as last year, yet my room-mate was an East Greenwich envoy (the vast majority this year were East Greenwich envoys; none lived outside the north-eastern Untied States and Bermuda).

Day two: Lost in numbers

With the morning came the next speaker, David Mahan, who had not much more to say than his experiences as a young father and a screed on how abstinence was the only sure way to keep oneself clean of any infection or pregnancy (I'll have more on what I think when I write my piece on televangelists tomorrow — I just heard tonight that Tammy Faye has copped it) as a result of what he went through with having a baby and scraping to get by. Once that finished, we went off to the athletic centre for the team-building games, in which we had to rotate around stations that put us in a game of Hot Potato, cryptograms, and bridge walk in a theme similar to that of Survivor. The one I didn't like much was the cryptogram: We were handed a novel and were told to decipher a code using sequences that relied on a page number, line number, and letter. The codes, which were touted as escape codes, turned out to be Youth to Youth operation numbers, disheartening when the trouble people went through to understand the instructions was accounted for.

Then, we had lunch, a Family Group session, and our workshops. The first workshop I attended was 'A Day in the Life of an ESL Student', led by a staff member who himself had for a while struggled with language after moving in. He led the class off with sheets numbered by level of language mastery; those with the number 1 were written entirely in Spanish, and the amount of English increased as the number went up. The workshop ended wit lists of suggestions to accommodate those arriving from other countries with little or no English. The second, 'The Write Stuff', was initially a course in writing when other people tell you what to include, having us write any sort of work as she announced words for us to include in the order in which she announced them. Soon, though, it became a session in which we gathered in a circle and one or two people would come in and act out a scenario, and one in the circle would yell 'Freeze!' if he or she had an idea of a scenario that fit the positions the people inside were in, causing them to hold their positions and leave if the person who called tapped them out and assumed their position before continuing. Soon enough, we were all doubled over in laughter; one they found more hilarious was my intervention on a parent discipling an emotional child to turn it into me being a healer and the other girl confessing her 'sins'.

Then we had dinner, and the Youth Staff had a presentation that did away with projector idents that gave a glimpse of what the skit would cover and, rather, had staff members come out with flash cards with years written on them. The funniest of them all was a director's cut scene, in which a director had to do two takes on a scene in which a sister found her brother to be a drug addict and near death, whereupon she called her mother, who then hailed an ambulance. Two takes, one with pouting on the part on all cast members and another in which crying was induced, passed before the director announced that there were two many emotions to describe the disaster of such news.

Once that and another group session cleared, we went out to the athletic centre for racing games, food, and a movie. The pool was closed this year, so there went my chances to clean my toe up. The time would be spent with a girl I met during the writing workshop and her boyfriend, both from Connecticut and coming to conference for the first time.

Days three and four: Water and tears

Since the day began with a youth action planning session, I feel obligated to explain the group I came with and have been a part of for four years or so. We are a church group, responsible for many events occurring on the island for the enjoyment of kids and teenagers and for the benefit of the church. However, the group has been falling into disrepair; some of the senior members have ended up smoking, drinking, and causing other mayhem; indeed, as I stated in the 2005 report, one had been caught with marijuana at the conference. As Mike, the member of our youth group who was working as a Youth Staff member, explained in the morning, the previous leaders had been lenient on the other members, requiring that no drugs be done 'at the meetings'. Since laws prohibited it anyway, this had no effect. Mike decided, along with the rowdy bunch we came up with, that a drug-free style outside meetings would be compulsory. However, he warned of opposition from the girls who didn't come because of their involvement in the Costa Rica trip — indeed, according to him, many of them had been caught drinking vodka on the trip. The discussion dragged on into the following morning's discussion session, and we finally agreed on a bill to be voted on at the next meeting.

Back to day three. Once the planning session finished, we returned to the auditorium for another speaker, Harriet Turk. She led off with a story of a cashier who at first refused to talk to her until she gave her an ultimatum: stay put until a word was said. The next day, she came back, and the cashier announced to the whole store what was being rung up. As it turned out, this girl had a problem with the job and her social life that reflected in how she went about work. This led her to introduce a chant — one she would transmit to her daughter whenever she was out — that was supposed to make us assure ourselves that our social situation was within reach of rectification.

Lunch passed, and we had our third workshops. I attended a seminar on Internet safety, in which the officers led off with a few videos, one in which a kid fell off his bike down a concrete stairwell. The message, he said, was that anything could float around on the Internet. Indeed, he showed us a few things about social networking sites and friends on the Internet that shocked me. The first was a MySpace page of a person who legally possessed marijuana but ended up sharing it with teens he met through the page; the second was a story of a kid whose parents were technologically literate but was depressed much of the time, turning to the Internet for comfort before a 'friend' turned on him a week before he committed suicide.

Then, we headed back to the athletic centre for a round of water fights. I was not involved in any of the games in particular, yet I did often hang around people who ended up getting splashed in many places. One of the staff did eventually toss water at me, although it quickly cleared up. Yet I would have another source of water to worry about soon enough: tears. During the games, I chose to tail a pack of students from the snow cone machine. They all eventually were drenched as I followed them, but soon enough, one girl began to cry over a guy rejecting her based on an abortion belief (again, look for my televangelism piece tomorrow). Eventually one of her friends, a staff member, and I cheered her up, and all was bright and rosy again.

We cleaned off, had dinner, and we had the dance. Like last time, the dance was being held in the Rotunda rather than the park, but this was as planned (perhaps since there had been thunderstorms in the area as of recent). Yes, I did have a map or two, but this time, I would not — by my own choice! — be working on it whilst everyone else was having a good time. Time would be spent alongside two staff members, one of whom had, like me, obtained a great deal of college credits in her senior year. (This person I did eventually give a few old maps to.) I ended up dancing with them, and I enjoyed it. I'm not sure if it's due to a crush — if this were the case, it occurred really, really late this year — but when I was around these people or even on the floor, nothing seemed to matter other than how I looked to the people I was actually dancing with. (I might write a little more on that.)

On the final day, the family groups organised and we had a mass picnic outside the athletic centre. Then, we went into our room and made an attempt at Ha, which collapsed as people just couldn't stop giggling. The closing ceremonies followed, in which we were all given fortune cookies to crack at the same time, and I was actually able to get AIM contact lists for once!

So, youth staff?

Yes, administrative staff. Everyone has been telling me to apply, and it's time I gave back to the programme after feeding off it for four years. I can't wait until March.

Nobody tell James.

OMGZ u kuld gt rapd on myspace

2007-05-31T02:31:13Z

http://roaring.livejournal.com/70304.html

There are times when I believe somebody's got to shoulder the blame for a scourge happening. A case like that would be the current furore struck up by civilians and fire-fighters dying of lung infections brought on by the dust clouds from the falling World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001 — the city has to give them some sort of compensation since there was too little to do since the attacks were so sudden. In other cases, particularly those arising on the Internet, I pity the many sites, such as Match.com and MySpace, who have come under fire due to the plethora of stories of women being raped and killed — underage girls in the latter case.

Many of you who still have MySpace accounts may have taken notice to the new practice of barring adults from contacting kids using the service. This is testament that this whole kerfuffle over social networking sites being responsible for the welfare of underage end users has finally reached the point where things have to be sacrificed in order to remain sheltered from the legal firestorm. In the spring of 2006, a 14-year-old user and her mother, afresh from a date with a 19-year-old — who claimed to be a high school senior with a football record — that ended in rape, sued the News Corporation for neglecting such a danger while running MySpace. Now, like any other social networking site, it voluntarily posted a set of guidelines for young users concerning how to keep themselves safe on the Internet, but for this girl, the site needed an active cushion. While MySpace had for a running period of time been the venue for several encounters that led to assaults, this was the first time the unthinkable happened — someone was suing the site! What's more, News Corp jumped in its shoes and turned the spigot of communication reform.

While it is rather noble of a site like MySpace, which has been no stranger to the ills of its service, to implement cautionary measures, there simply are too many problems for them to handle. Firstly, at time of writing, there is no credit-card or other parental validation since the site meets COPPA with a registration age minimum of 14. Secondly, there is no viable way of making sure the pervs don't join; it's not like booking a reservation at the counter complete with tête-à-tête communication between the customer and clerk, and there exists no database capable of extorting the aliases of sex offenders every second of every minute. Tech buffs like me have been aware of this for ages; a web site cannot perfectly verify anyone and there will always be a lot of room for error.

MySpace is nothing more than a web service. It is not a day-care centre; it is not a parent. To its users it seems to be just like a game on OneMoreLevel or even one of the Math Blaster games, where there is little interaction that equates to human communication. The most that can be done to intervene is to instruct users on how to use the site, even setting up an account if need be. When you suspect a message to contain a virus, don't open the attachment; ergo, if you think somebody's trying to impress you so much as to get credentials needed to contact you in real life, you should think it over and decide whether it's worth the risk. This is why I believe your best friend is a webcam, especially if both ends are using it; you know exactly with whom you're communicating and you have body language available to you.

If MySpace had openly solicited sex offenders, it would be in a violation tantamount to the actual assaults; however, it is merely a web service, and it should not have any responsibility for what happens off the site unless they directly sponsor it. The meeting referenced above was arranged by the girl and the boy on their own terms, independent from anything MySpace specifically set down, so MySpace technically is not responsible; and had the case made it to, say, the Supreme Court, MySpace would have won, and we'd have had another resolution indemnifying such sites just as McDonald's was indemnified for obesity.

By now you might have clicked the link and realised that it led to a LiveJournal picket rather than the ubiquitous news story of someone meeting a man on MySpace and being assaulted. As is MySpace, LiveJournal is a web service, and what it can do in order to promote a good environment is essentially the same as moderating a forum. While discussion of illegal activity in general is something that can't be punished, a journal dedicated to the promotion of such is a totally different matter, and there are laws prohibiting the service from knowingly playing host. Here, the user roaring has rallied users to protest SixApart's surprise practice of removing journals and communities that have to do with paedophilia or pornography, among many illegal intents. The cited yaoi_smut_fics community apparently spawned after two deletions based on the fact that it, well, housed gay porn fics! Also cited was the following comment:

It's not that I don't care about anyone or anything. It's just that I'm too lazy to care. I don't mean anyone any harm and I sincerely hope everyone in the world leads a great life but I really don't want to do anything to help them have a great life.

There is a 13 year old girl who lives a few houses down. I want to [expletive] her and [elaboration removed for taste, as the intent is pretty clear from the start]. I'm 18 years older than her and I'm a woman.

The comment was reported, but LiveJournal's service team stated that such comments were nothing they had a hold of — although in the interest of taste it should have been removed — or even at that, who the hell unscreened that comment?

We understand and agree that this is very disturbing, we cannot take action against a user for admitting that they have committed illegal activities or are thinking about committing illegal activities. It is not illegal to discuss illegal actions. We can only take action if the user is actively encouraging others to commit such actions, or if they are soliciting or providing information on how to do so. Because this is not the case here, we regret that we cannot take action.

The protest's prosecution is a default removal notice sent to a friend:

Your journal and/or its associated profile or interests has been reported to us as containing material which expresses interest in, solicits, or encourages illegal activity. As this is a violation of both LiveJournal's Terms of Service and United States law, we have permanently suspended the journal.

If you read carefully, though, you will notice that the said notice was delivered based on an offence created by the entire journal, not by two or three comments; a judgement otherwise would be egregious. While the comment should not have appeared, and I assume SixApart wants such decisions to rest with the journal or community on which it appears, you just can't deny that posting porn on a public venue isn't a great idea.

This, however, is where the difference between profiles and comments comes in when it comes to moderation. LiveJournal, of course, is a blogging site. While MySpace and LiveJournal both have an obligation to remove porn and they both cannot be indicted for actions taken off the site, the reason LiveJournal has ignored the comment — and the reason MySpace would do the same — is probably because such territory is that of the one running the profile or blog, and it's the fault of whomever unscreened it if it remains on the page.

In any case, if something bad is posted as a comment, or if a date set up on a social networking site goes awry, the ones involved have no-one to blame but themselves. I'll say it again: MySpace is not your day-care, and LiveJournal can only care more about the blogs it's hosting more than the comments. After all, not everyone with a balanced mind would have responded to the aforementioned comment the same way.

Two late entries

2007-05-20T01:57:43Z

GTS <3

Yes, that's a heart emoticon. Blame Memory.

Those of you with Diamond and Pearl are probably aware of the Global trading Station in Jubilife City. This facility, which operates through Nintendo WiFi Connection, allows you to put up your Pokémon for barter with anyone around the world. Theoretically you could have no-one around you and you could get a Pokémon badly needed for Pokédex completion or your party. While the GTS allows you to search within your Pokédex only, it's otherwise fun to put your Pokémon up or see what others want for theirs.

For me, I also like looking at locations on that massive globe. You can register your permanent location there to see where all of your Pokémon come from, and if you're like me you'll want to rack up as many locations as possible.

I first paid attention when a thread appeared on SuperCheats concerning people using Action Replay to obtain Pokémon and quickly put them up for a cheap deal. While this is possible, the really funny part is actually examining the offers: When I was looking for a Dialga, some had it at around level 70 but wanted a level 100 one in return, a complete paradox. Then again, a lot of the requests I'd seen made sense considering I grew up in an environment in which legendary Pokémon were always a precious commodity. While I was screwed as far as searching went, I could simply put a Pokémon on offer and wait a few minutes for a response. I was thus far able to trade:

A level 52 Whiscash, fresh from the wild, for a Spiritomb — which came from Japan at level 1 (newly hatched) and infected with Pokérus
A level 63 Altaria for a level 26 Milotic from New York
A level 7 Jirachi for a level 70 Rayquaza from Pennsylvania
A level 52 Hippowdon for a level 46 Torterra from Michigan

So I decided: Why not wheel and deal? Dig up a Pokémon, trade it, put the received Pokémon back on offer for something I really needed. I think I'm going to have some more fun than just training.

Fonts

The link above goes to a BBC Magazine piece on Helvetica, a font that you'll find almost anywhere. It's a Macintosh font, it's a logo slogan choice, it's something you perhaps didn't know the name of but saw everywhere.

However, another link on the page goes to BanComicSans.com, an attempt by two Canadians to push legislation to outlaw the use of Comic Sans in publishing. As many of you know, Comic Sans is that Windows default font developed first for use in help bubbles and then anything directed at a juvenile audience, such as a comic. Now, though, it's likely to be found on anything in attempts to connect with the consumer at a colloquial level. It may seem to be reasonable to the people pushing for its removal due to the fact that its ubiquity does no justice to the fact that it looks really out of place in the commercial environment, but no, it will not be banned. This is due to two main reasons: It's a ridiculous idea to make a government ban a typeface, and — hold your breath — it's a Windows (and now Macintosh) pre-load.

Because Windows operating systems come with fonts such as Comic Sans and Verdana that were developed for use by Microsoft, as well as fonts like Arial that are licensed from the Monotype Corporation, those fonts are probably going to be the ones you encounter in a world of small, fledgling businesses and MySpace-like placards. Decent fonts, such as Univers (I would say Helvetica, but that's a Macintosh pre-load), are not cheap, let alone free — so what choice do you really have if you're starting out or are just a regular guy writing invites to a house party? Even at that, you have the fact that such fonts will not render for many others on the Internet, so you're stuck with Microsoft pre-loads. Decent fonts, even non-Microsoft fonts, end up being in graphics.*

Personally, I don't like Comic Sans. I really don't like any of the Microsoft pre-loads, but Comic Sans is probably the most misused of all. I would use it for school activity worksheets or flyers, but that's where it stands; in my mind it's not even a good candidate for — well — comics! The line height is too high, upper-case letters are far from uniform, and mixed-case captions in comics never really took off (unless they were in Mad). Instead of banning it, though, I would probably seek to educate people in decent and tasteful graphic design and typography, and maybe call on Monotype, Linotype, ITC, Adobe, and Agfa to lower their rates.

* There are, however, a few notable exceptions: The websites for the Guardian and the Sun use Macintosh-native Geneva as their primary face. Also, Photobucket has started using Adobe-propagated and newly Macintosh-native Myriad in headers.

Disorder

2007-05-10T01:54:38Z

I noticed that ichigo_kura had taken this test, so I have done the same.

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Very High
Schizoid:	High
Schizotypal:	Moderate
Antisocial:	Moderate
Borderline:	Moderate
Histrionic:	High
Narcissistic:	High
Avoidant:	High
Dependent:	High
Obsessive-Compulsive:	High
-- Personality Disorder Test -- -- Personality Disorder Information --

Damn.

Pearl

2007-05-10T01:41:02Z

I got it last Wednesday, and it's all I've been doing for the past week, explaining why I haven't updated. And through completing it with the help of Marilland's walkthrough (and here are some things he missed, so I'll be contacting him about it), I've found it to be addictive. I haven't even touched Ranger and Diddy Kong Racing DS (supposedly a remake of the Nintendo 64 game, and I've heard that Banjo and Conker have been dropped since Rare moved over to Microsoft) yet.

Then again, that happens with every game I get; I get deliberately stuck. That, and I haven't had any WiFi battles yet, although I have 8 numbers registered at time of writing. And all the while, I have posted that I'm training, yet a lot of what I'm doing is working out the cogs (caves, items, buildings, etc.). Simply put, I'm a slow mover, and I have to focus just to get my team trained, which is difficult considering the landscape and lack of competent trainers. I miss Match Call, which let you come across trainers in Sapphire who obviously have improved; instead you have a VS Seeker, which you got in Fire Red to rematch everyone (some not changing level at all, but others making some headway).

What I like in particular are the changes in battle rules, particularly the contact attributes. It now seems fair that Fire Punch, for example, is a physical move instead of a special one by type default (although it still made you susceptible to Carvanha's Rough Skin). Now it seems a little odd that you have a stat for use of certain move elements, which undermines type match-ups, which are probably one of the most crucial aspects of battle. Also to be mentioned are Quick balls; they make it easy to capture Pokémon and eliminate much of the fainting mistakes.

What I do not like, however, is the registration of a Pokémon as seen being enough to get a National Pokédex. Rather, the National Pokédex should have been given if you had captured a minimum amount, as in Fire Red. In fact, I strongly believe it takes much of the objective out of training. Then again, you get a colour upgrade for your Trainer's Card if you do capture the whole bunch of 493.

All the same, it's an excellent instalment — it's just that I have yet to get some people who will actually battle and not be so arrogant about it. I'll have my credentials posted later on.

Has hell frozen over?

2007-05-01T02:49:57Z

For once, I'm thinking that a lot of the drama going on between PC and me has root in my position as a Super Cheats administrator. On one side, I run to the root admins at PC and I get hounded away by the people they employ to stand in as superior moderators. On the other, I happen to be the one at a disadvantage just because the other has decided to exploit glitches to prove his point.

The latter case is that of David and me. Ah, when we were super mods; we didn't have to worry about banning others or setting massive rule codes. The ones with the power to ban were Rich and Dennis. Then Dave is promoted in place of Rich, who had been in the process of moving to Spain, and soon enough he's fixed in that position. Before then, we were neutral, often agreeing with each other, but ever since he became the administrator (I was to follow a few months later), things came unglued. All of the sudden, lower mods were complaining that he had been putting his foot down with personal opinions, a few times having to ban some for annoyances over MSN (and now Andy blocking me on that plea doesn't seem so bad after all). Since Nintendo_dude would soon leave his post as admin, I ended up being the one having to rake the muck.

There were a few problems by the time this came to be, though. First, I was by the time I became an admin a full-fledged PC member, becoming a moderator a mere month after Nintendo_dude and I became Super Cheats' newest administrators. Naturally I would have to lay down some ground rules in my part to make sure the forums were running fine, but as I sank deeper into PC, I actually began to drift away from Super Cheats. These days, a lot of the actions I take are the result of being buzzed on MSN, instead of me doing regular patrols. The first sign, though, was dropping off with submissions; I initially attributed that to an increase in working hours. So I sometimes feel that I'm not as sharp with situations as I had been before I found PC; in fact, even after I fell out, I still felt as if I now had a void to fill, and being an administrator at a site as popular and prone to spammers as Super Cheats was becoming unpleasant, what with Dave being hospitalised and cut down a few bars by Rich in the past that he sought madly to make up for misinterpretations of his own agenda — really, the rules he made as well as flawed interpretations of the ones I set. So I constantly bear the brunt. It's not that I have MSN or that I've been around longer; it's that I've written a lot of the rules.

Then I think: Andy, David (Origin), Jake....They must be in such a position as well. The staff administrators and root administrators, as I have said before, are not on the best of terms. The former group has been found to effect policies that I would normally expect of Steve or Kwesi given their position. And that's all I've critiqued them on. Yet I wonder: Could my criticism of them have root in my position on Super Cheats? It very well could. I've been so bitter to not realise that it was all a reincarnation of my attitude toward Dave for not following through on a plan I had set for the forums, although in the latter case I probably had significantly more grounds for it as I was at the same level as Dave and I looked up to Rich for what his position as site owner meant for him.

So as I crawl into bed, I think: Am I not cut out for Super Cheats anymore? Have my instincts spread into PC and paralysed it? Am I becoming, like Mewthree, an admin with decaying criteria?

Read the rules

2007-04-19T22:43:45Z

It's really a shame that I have to rant about something that should have been planned by forums, chat rooms, and social networks everywhere but often isn't explained well enough.

When you register for any of these types of sites, you have to read and agree to a set of terms. Often you're presented with a little blurb describing the forum and what is expected before you register. On boards built on vBulletin, Invision Power, or whatever more, they write the terms of service for you. Of course, everyone knows that you have to read such terms in order to be a member, but not enough effort is made to make sure everyone goes by them. This is due to three reasons:

no-one is quizzed about it;
such terms of service don't often constitute the rules referred to when moderation is carried out; and
in normal cases you just have to click a little checkbox or button to get past the TOS screen.

In these cases, it's easy for any of four things to happen: A law-abiding member registers and posts, and eventually things get sour, a person joins to spam the hell out of the board, a person joins and assumes that the rules are probably the same for the board as any others they may be members of, or a bot registers (which is beyond the scope of this entry).

In the first case, either the person is hiding it really well, or something develops from something insignificant into a major glitch. This could result from repeated harsh experiences with the moderators or lack of agreement with much of the community on certain domestic or moderation issues. In half of such cases the administration is just full of miserable people; in others the member develops his or her own ideas that either misconstrue the objective of the administration or certain rules. The trigger either is a case of mini-modding (which obviously suggests superiority on the part of the person doing the modding) or an intramural event such as a relationship breaking up or a change of blood. In cases in which the member errs, it is usually resolved after the member is subject to peer mediation or insight therapy; in cases of the administration just being sour, you don't have a chance.

Then we have people who join, assuming that rules across the board are the same. This is a risky interpretation, seeing as, for example, PC has a whole section dedicated to emulation whilst PKMN.NET and SPPf don't want a word said of it.* A sub-problem can also be the lack of explicit regulation, leaving members to discern for themselves what the rules of posting are and potentially make posts bound to offend others. As a former PC member, I can tell you that implicit regulation made what the staff is today: While behaviour on the forums is average, some of the staff really wish they could have implicit regulation again. Here's the problem, though: You really have to trust all of the members who sign up, and bots and career spammers still are liable to join. Andy, in particular, isn't giving in so easily to this fact from what I can tell; I personally believe he's as much a piner for the old days as Paul or Ty, given his ramblings about how his perfect environment of unwritten rules was tragically spoilt by an influx of n00bs:

I'm sure if you read all this then you'd know by now you'd know I can't stand n00bs (and most if not all of this is about n00bs). I wasn't always like this, there was a time where I wouldn't put anyone down. Times change and n00bs came in, over the past few months it's like PC has had a rush of n00bs. It's like setting out food on a table outside and watch all the flys come in after it. And sadly n00bs has gotten to most if not all of the Staff of PC. I know all of us had last 1 run in with a stupid n00b on PC. And I know tons of members had run ins with them too. So everyone knows how I feel about them (at least a little). Lately I've been getting too many n00b PMs and threads for my own good. And if given the chance I'd ban every single one of them, just so I don't have to see their stupid posts. I get PMs from members crying about their thread not showing up, or about a friend that's banned. n00bs don't read the rules unless told, they also don't try to do better on PC. They just go on with their stupid ways and know it all attitude. I hate it when they think they know more about PC then the Staff. They think they know what should be changed better then the Staff. I'm open to ideas, but when you walk into PC a week after joining and wanting to make a major change to PC for your own good, then that's a little stuck up and self centered. Even more so when Staff say it's a bad idea and that n00b keeps going on about it. I tell you, if I didn't have a bad feeling about telling someone off then I would. I'd tell them off so bad (not flaming) that it'd make them cry and leave. But I know if I did it then it'd come back and bite me in the butt one day. But it still doesn't change the fact I HATE them. And I wish all of them would just leave PC. We'd be soooo much better off without the stupid n00bs that bugs the living day lights out of me and all the other Staff and members around PC. To me if I happen to end up leaving PC (or at least the Staff) one day then it's going to be the stupidness of stupid dumb butt hole n00bs. Members are members, newbies are newbies, and n00bs are n00bs. Incase you didn't know, there's a difference in newbies and n00bs. Newbies are new members on PC that tries to learn the rules and to get around with other members and so on. Every good member on PC was a newbie at one time (no one joined PC and knew the rules and how everything worked right off the bat). But n00bs on the other hand will not learn and won't listen to anything Staff says. There's a big difference in the two and so I hate n00bs. I am not going to cover it up with some nice word or try to make them happy. I hate n00bs, did you get that? I HATE n00bs! Let me say that one more time I HATE THE F-ING n00bs ON PC!!!

While this excerpt does the term 'n00b' justice, defining the boundary between the sort and the law-abiding newcomers, it simply dismisses the fact that that's what you get for running a forum with no written rules. The fact of life that they are, spammers and flamers are actually technically protected by unwritten rules — meaning that there's no except of code or TOS that can be used to cite their offence and keep them banned. As the tone of this blog section is conveyed, he must have been reeling (and he probably still is) from the shock. In fact, what he said about me in response to another accusation from Paul in the April DCC buffered by my 'predictions' suggests that he expected others to take his rants seriously:

Oh, CW. You mean that stuck up ex-Mod that thought he knew everything on PC and thought so and so should have done things differently only because he had a Mod/Member prospective about things? Said I should listen to n00bs, respect them, I should change my ways because he thinks he's the ruler of the world? That said he got paired to a Staff member** so he could get Modded? That said we should have a smaller Staff only because [PKMN.NET] has a smaller one? You mean that CW?

This rant arose mainly from my complaint about staff redundancy and a complaint about the Simple Questions scheme going on in the gaming forums. I'll explain the latter here to make better sense of the rant: If you look at all of the gaming forums on PC, they're usually brimming with locked threads under an ordinance requiring that 'simple' questions go in a designated sticky thread. The issue I raised was that the word 'simple' was rather vague and, judging by the amount of locked threads, the scheme obviously wasn't working. As a SuperCheats.com admin, I can tell you that as soon as someone gets into a game talk forum there's potential for help requests, and someone's going to make a thread asking for help on a certain subject. To resolve the situation, I offered three suggestions: clarify 'simple', shift the 'simple questions' to a subforum, or retire the scheme. Nope, Andy simply delivered his hollow 'n00bs' argument and it was over.

In order to keep this from turning into a full-out anti-PC rant (you can't hate a forum, you only hate the members or the staff for the way rules are executed — perhaps this is an anti-Arcanine rant?), I'll just move on to the third case: career spammers. They can take the form of mental patients, thugs, and bored schmoes. Whatever the case, a career violator is a career violator to the name, posting derogatory rants, deliberately flouting decency rules or making topics filled with 'SPAMSPAMSPAMSPAM' just to get a reaction. In that case, you have to do something, and fast. Of course, this would require explicit regulation, as I said before; otherwise, not everyone will stand idly by.

The fourth case I won't elaborate on. Okay, maybe a little. A lack of security precautions — image verification or remote activation, to name a few — can mean your site is prone to hijacked computers through which people send bots (and also HTTP requests, which contributed to a lot of the crashing that went on prior to the big hacking) to advertise services or trick members into contracting a virus.

For admins, the message is clear: You can't trust your members. Also, moderation is subject to trial and error; if one thing proves cumbersome, it's likely to all fall down. For members: Read the rules.

* The argument for PC is that they are not distributing ROMs, and their rules prohibit members for requesting or distributing; also, most of the ROM discussion is over the creation of spin-off games using the dump files. For PKMN.NET, such information is bound to be useful for real pirates as well as hackers who have downloaded dumps whilst they had the actual game in their possession.

** This is a fallacy; I paired with Lily two months after my promotion.

'OMG im leaving'

2007-04-18T02:04:30Z

http://pkmn.net/forums/index.php?topic=58247

For those wondering, this isn't a new PC rant (but I have been refused a return to staff — but that we can cover later).

On the subject of departures, however, there is a funny side. All over PKMN.NET these days there are a lot of proclamations of 'I'm leaving!' because of several incidents that the poster has gone through. I admit that before I was banned from PKMN.NET I made a long one of my one, declaring myself the 'enemy of PUK'. These days, though, the fact that the author is more and more liable to back down on a leave is ridiculous, and the reasons have become more and more hostile and unforgiving.

I know it seems like a trend to leave, but I'm leaving permanently without any sub-accounts, attempts to come back or anything like that.

Basically, I just seem to you guys to be a wanderer who says stuff that everyone ignores than someone who can be considered a friend. This isn't for pity - or saying I have 'lack of friends' - I just don't seem to very popular or fit in well. Getting voted underrated several times (yes, I have paranoia, so I nominated myself), really struck my confidence. I guess I never broke my shell - I guess I just didn't hit off with you guys.

I wasted almost 2k posting here, only to find my opinions are totally misregarded. I think I've just wasted my time, you have better Team Builders, cooler people, and me to talk to through MSN, so it shouldn't be a problem.

I'm sorry that I put so much detail into this post, I wanted to come off blunt really, but I wanted to make it clear why so I didn't make you think it's a joke and, on top of that, make it clear I expect absolutely no pity (which I don't).

I'm still gonna be on IRC, occasionally, I just don't see any point in being on the forum. I'm not deleting my account - for that ever common habit to come back - but I'm not going to be here.

Hicky, supposedly beleaguered by lack of recognition for his efforts, decided it was time for him to go, and in doing so he published a harsh screw-it topic to declare that he was out. Had he considered coming back or even just cut the hostility out, I would have more sympathy for him — as I've felt out of place on PC on numerous occasions — but I've only ever recognised him for being standoffish.

Unfortunately, the trend is that the ones to publish a farewell post are the ones who have the most ire. Some people do give reasons and are generally calm but down-to-earth about it, as Akinari was before he left on school commitment, but many times you'll find in such a topic severe resent for joining and lack of insight. Worst of all, as I said, many do break their vow, returning with even more ire for the moment. This doesn't mean, however, that you shouldn't post an advance for a vacation or if you're going to appear less due to a restriction or some mulling. You could probably even make a post saying that you feel out of place and might not see it worth coming back, but the worst thing you can do is arrogantly proclaim that you will never come back.

I've done it quite a few times, yet most of the time it's been via email, on this blog, or on IMs and PMs. That way you keep your reputation intact with the mainstream, although not necessarily the friends you send it to.

Reinstatement letter

2007-04-09T22:29:29Z

I am writing to inform you of my decision following the events that occurred over the past few months, inclusive of the offence I dealt Kelsey and my removal from the staff. The conclusion I have reached is that my actions over this time have been done with lack of forethought and a relentless generalisation of members, and would not have been done had I simply accepted that what I had done to Kelsey before, when I was confronted by Dawson, was itself without forethought or consideration for situations prior.

You may be aware of the statements I made regarding how PC was going to 'die' and such. I realise now that, although some of what I predicted and hoped for initially has come true, such statements were only of blasphemy to the Community and indicative of my own search for benefit. As part of my plea for forgiveness I have removed such statements from my blogs.

A lot of my anger was also rooted in things that I either had no control over or were the result of paranoia. When Dawson and Karli confronted me, I immediately assumed that the staff for which they worked backed their reaction. The truth is, what I said to incite it was spiteful and irritable. In the delusion that the staff was, for these reasons, organising against me, I ended up copping out and throwing a fit at everyone I came across, eventually asking to be removed after an attempt to incense the staff over one of the statements I wrote. My hatred went on, eventually driving me to deep regret, which, with the only tools I was familiar with, could not move anyone.

I think the root of this all comes down to a few things. Many of you know I communicate very often using the MSN service. I use this service because I expect a quick response if I need to talk to someone, and for that reason I do not like communicating through the private messaging system or email. Therefore, when someone cuts me off, I become very upset. I understand that some of you have blocked me for good reasons, yet before I was too concerned with this method to allow for them.

This aside, I have two disorders: I have Asperger's syndrome, and I am passive-aggressive. Thus, it is very hard for me to keep my emotions in check, and I usually rely on them to make my decisions for me. I see my life as a balance, which I try constantly to keep.

And because of this, the thought that some of you are put off by what I've done still lingers, which makes it difficult to remain active on the boards; it's as if there's someone out to get me. I'm mainly writing to see if I can talk to you as a whole to help put these misunderstandings aside and become happy chums again, even if you decide against restoring me as a staff member.

The prom

2007-03-15T01:36:37Z

This is ridiculous. I stop blogging to brood on the end of my moderation career at PC (I won't get into it until I get the reinstatement review back), and something lands on my desk like a football. It's in a tiny, cute embroidered envelope and takes the form of a decorated card (printed with printer ink, albeit). I read it and it says the promenade is scheduled for 1 June.

Wait, what?

The prom. Are you going or not?

Do you have to squeeze every lurid detail out of me, man?

Life was better, as we know, when I was in middle school. Too young to work a job, and your parents could easily pay into a big function such as a church dance. If only that were the case in this day and age. True, my own parents, for starters, said they'd pay for me to attend the prom (my father never did), but even if they're paying, $60 for admission compounded with $70 for a tuxedo, $20 for a corsage, and prices for drinks varying are nothing to sneer at — and you can double the admission and corsage if you're paired. And in the extreme case — this is from the men's point of view — in which you end up footing your pair's dress, you can add upward of $250, more than twice the cost of admission and grave considering whether that dress will ever see use again.

Middle school was slightly different — at the very least for us men. Now, I had been dragged kicking and screaming into the dances at the beginning of seventh grade and ended up attending both of the promenades held in the cafeteria as long as I was eligible. They were called 'semi-formals' — the admission was a mere $14 per person, drinks were free, and formality was restricted as per the guidelines. There were no corsages, and limousines were prohibited. For the men, it was easy to get away with the bare-bones minimum, but when you look at what most of the girls were wearing (some others were more conservative), you'd expect it to be a full-blown prom upon stumbling into the arena.

Now, though, it's a different matter. Gone are the days of hushed activity. You're about to spend nearly $300 — individually — perhaps once each of the two years — for one night on the town, and you're a junior or senior. (The figure can be nearly double if you're a female, and triple or so when paired.) Although this cost situation is relatively the same, and probably could be negotiable if it were applied to a suburban high school, there are further causes for my own inhibition. Firstly, my school, a charter school operated by the county, has a very small body, so selection is rather limited. Secondly, as I explained before, the school is remote. Although it's perfectly possible to rent a limo, you still have the fact that not many people can drive out and carpool. Thirdly, it's still a situation in which you have the rap blasting, as could be seen from the youth summit earlier this year, and not much decent (I mean sans shaking the ass and grinding) dancing is likely to get done.

So no, I'm not going. Unless, of course, one of the girls at the table (all but one are juniors) approaches the subject....

It's a girl's world

2007-02-23T03:05:44Z

I get to explain away my failure to update often with an ostensibly lame excuse: I'm a boy. And it seems to carry truth when you compare the journals of a normal guy versus that of a girl.

I'll share my findings with you and admit that most of the material is in the LiveJournal spectrum. Indeed, if you look at my friends page, you won't find too many updates by men like us, and when they do, they're concise and abbreviated. soanevalcke's journal is a good example aside from mine; his updates are far and few between and the latest post at time of writing suggests that the practice has become boring for him, which is backed up by the statement in writing and the length of time it took to come up with what's called a 'meme' (which I assume to be a diminutive of 'memory', a tool available on LiveJournal that I've never had the patience to experiment with).

Now look at a post by any of the women and compare. Here is a public entry made by the blogger mentioned before:

Walked in the park today. And then, as a bit of side time to burn off, Lucas (my dog, might I remind most of you), Vincent and I decided to jump across the river. Vincent said that I wouldn't make it, and I did. Lucas swam across, eager to get back to me. He got his toes wet.

On the second try, I wasn't so lucky. One leg of mine made it across, the other slipped into the smelly creek. My shoe's currently out to dry, and I quickly ran home to wash my right leg. Lucas got drenched all over. D:

Then look at a post that otherwise would have a similar mood, this being by lightningchan:

Right, so skipping over early morning stuff since it's just whining about cramps and no one cares. So. School.

I got there around eight and only read one of the signs on the door, and even then only half of it. XD I thought all the homerooms were posted in front of the caf, so I had to shove my way through a MASSIVE wall of people to try to see, since god forbid the kids go to their frigging classrooms, or move out of the way, or even INTO the caf so that people can see the lists, or even move around in that huge hallway. Anyway, I figured it out a moment later and went to the gym where I figured it would be anyway. XD It was there and I got my room number and headed off.

Dude, I know almost EVERYONE in my homeroom. There are only...5 people I've never seen before? And even then, I think I've seen them, just not had any classes with them. It's insane. o_o Of course, best part is how Dean, Lisa, Mara and Alyssa are all in the class, too. :D Yay. Our lockers are RIGHT there too. Mine's a palindrome and third-closest to our class. XD; I'm not upset about them moving the lockers around now. I have no classes on the side of the school that Physics is at, so it'd just be annoying to still have my locker there. Anyway, we really didn't do very much in Philosophy. Just looked at quotes and then wrote down what we think Philosophy is and what we want to get out of the course. I copied Dean's second answer: "a 90." XDD; Then I drew Axel and Marluxia on his paper. Which evolved into all the Obvilion Orgy members. That was fun.

Next was Discrete with my old Calculus teacher. WHAT FUN. And...it actually wasn't bad. It really is just my Physics class over again with less people. XD; There are only two or three people who weren't in it. The teacher handed out a review sheet that was just a lot of simple trig. The hardest thing we had to do was rearrange the formula for the cosine law to find an angle. The other side was pretty much the same, but with graphing, so we didn't do that. Overall it was pretty good though, and the only question on the front that we didn't know, we actually got a lesson on. o_o; And I understood it after he taught it, too! If he actually teaches like that every single day, I may do well in this course. How exciting. XD;

After this class was English. In a portable. DX I managed to ask someone in my Calculus class where P7 was, though. Didn't have to though, since I was right in assuming the seventh one was one of the newer ones, right out one of the nearest doors. XD So I went there and saw Ann sitting at a group of desks in the corner. I don't know her amazingly well, but we sat next to each other in Grade 10 Science so yeah. I sat with that group. Sharon's there too so at least I know people. We didn't do very much in that class. Just took papers, she explained our CPT and wants us to choose our books by Monday (wtf! so early!) and then we did some brainstorming on the word "fragmentation." XDD We ended up talking about asexual reproduction since, technically, it could be a type of fragmentation. :[ It involves cells splitting apart or whatever.

English teacher let us out early, so I went to the caf and bought food. It was good, and we've all got the same lunch again, so this semester should be fun. :D I've missed having lunch with the whole group, even though not everyone was there today for some reason or another, including a bunch of guidance visits ~~which for Dean's we took the liberty of eating his pizza so it wouldn't get cold~~. XD

Last but not least as Calculus. Fomg, I zoomed through the worksheet she gave us. :B I didn't finish, but damn I remembered everything. So proud of myself, even if it was just simple things like evaluating functions, expanding, factoring, and finding roots. XD; Ann's in that class too so I sat beside her and Mitch sits in the two-desk row beside us. So yay, I know people. I got 75 last year (or was it 74? I dunno.), but I want higher. Hopefully I'll get a much better mark this time. We're doing review today and tomorrow and then we start the course. :D It's sad that Calculus is probably going to be my favourite class this time around. Philosophy will be fun, but I miss being good at math and having already taken this course, I'll probably be good at it.

Now I'm home. Gonna wait for Bryan to come home so I can open the door for him, considering he's too lazy to take out his key, then go get changed and then...start on my homework, I guess. Two math worksheets to finish up, got to pull together a few binders and organize them for my classes and then...get mom and dad to write out cheques for my textbooks.

~~Hey, I can use my school:calculus tag again! XD~~

Blimey. I admit I don't make it a point to detail the school day, given that I'm pretty much restricted as it is as far as classes go and not much goes around socially since the school is so remote. And even if scenes were made every day and the school I attended was in a more urban area, I probably wouldn't find it in me to record it.

The conclusion then comes from my stepmother: It's a matter of them being more vocal. Now you wonder why there are so many books in the library written in the point of view of girls — seventh-grade Bebo users, ninth- and tenth-grade MySpace users and clubbers, all ignominiously leaving out the boys in such roles, except perhaps as hot crushes or concerned relatives. I know that there are some boys out there who probably love to document their outings, and many of them have pictures that generally take the place of words, but when it comes to the Internet, a vision I have been seeing seems to have credit: In the Internet, it's simply a girl's world. It's a world where cute animated backgrounds, pink and black stripes, fluorescent colours, and stars are accepted fixtures. It's also a world where, whenever the aforementioned is absent, animé characters, Photoshop images and icons, and text smilies dominate. And a lot of it can be attributed to the impact women have had on the Internet. And that's being masculinely conservative about it.

So what can be said in conclusion about the men? I really don't know. I believe we should leave it to the women to say that.

St Valentine's Day: Just a vestige?

2007-02-15T03:24:42Z

No, I'm aware of all the public hullabaloo and the pressures on many of you with significant others today, and I'm sure your endeavours may have been worth it, but this screed is, once again, about me.

I can't help noticing how vapid this day is. Like I said, it's oriented toward those with actual infatuation or love in their lives, but as far as the man who writes a blog, had a few fleeting infatuations, had been chewed out by a friend of one of those objects, and hasn't been subject personally to a shred of the theme in the past four years, the day is, I have to say it, terribly inflated. I even believe that the ones who celebrate it often suffer — not necessarily at the hand of their significant other, but themselves as a result of trying too hard. Yes, I know it's nice; no, it's not a day to reserve for only a spastic draught of 'I love you', since that should be present as much as possible. I'll say this about myself about the day: It was only up until grade four that I actually had to go out of my way to buy those Valentine cards for the class, and ever since the day has just avoided my attention, save for the two I got from a pen pal four or five years ago.

So as far as I go, I don't know the pressure that most people are under today, but I still feel sorry for those who adhere to it. As is is today, I just find the idea to just be a needless acme. This day is on par with Mother's Day, Father's Day, and any other subject-specific holiday only in the idea of theoretically dedicating one day to a certain person and screwing off the rest of the time. While I can understand honouring your relatives for raising you well (with an emphasis on the word), I just don't see the point in reserving one day to demonstrate how much you love another. When it comes to love — and I'm being theoretical here — you need to exhibit it as long as you feel it, in moderation, without putting too much pressure on yourself. If you just wait for today to let it peak, it will eventually end up being systematic and irrespective of feelings that you might really have.

The funny thing is that this day started out as a generic Catholic holiday to honour any priest condemned in the Roman Empire before the time of Constantine. The pertinent feast coincided with the feast of Lupercalia, in which runners would streak through town and touch women in the hopes of aiding pregnancy (such a scene is present in the first act of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar). According to legend, St Valentine of Genoa, one of the martyrs the Church chose to celebrate, happened to have secretly arranged marriages and possibly fell in love with a jailer's daughter. Along the line, Geoffrey Chaucer associated the day with romance in a poem. It was later left to modern commercialism to introduce the notion of giving jewellery and chocolates.

As a result, you'll only see the Vatican holding on to the tradition of honour, whilst all the world uses the holiday to go out, don red and pink, and scoop up anything red and in the shape of a heart with which to shower another with the affection they've ostensibly accumulated throughout most of the year prior.

Bah humbug.

Youth summit #4

2007-02-12T00:57:08Z

Yes, I know, I promised you all another youth summit summary, so here I am. The thing I want to address now is that my throat is not in the best of conditions first due to congestions and then karaoke singing and some speech I had to make for the rest of the table. (It's called laryngitis. Gah.)

The first thing I did on Friday was sweep right out the door without telling anyone; I'd reserved the day for it and notified work and school, and it was nearing 7.30am, when I would have to appear at the church for transport. This time we were headed to another Elks conference, so that meant I was rearing to get my iPod going via a transceiver, but since we could not find one to purchase on the island, I had to crank it to full volume whilst the girls in the van found their iTrip and blasted rap and punk rock the whole way. (Even worse, the pastor was in a separate car, so he had no iPod of his own to counter with.)

Normally the summit would be held at a hotel in New Brunswick, but since it was closed for renovation we were shunted into one in Princeton, where, unfortunately, pilots were sleeping before their next flight and could not be disturbed. This did not stop the conference from becoming its noisy and cluttered self; on the first day my room was one of a few that received silence orders, which my room-mates continued to flout. When we got there, we put our luggage away as usual, but it was in a partition that was removed later as the day wore on; I put my coat on a rack provided in a room, but once the partition was removed and I had collected my luggage, the rack disappeared; the coat was never announced during lost-and-found claim calls. As a result, I now have no winter coat other than two fleece layers.

First, we had our luncheon and opening. When I sat at my group's table, I found it hard to concentrate on a new map I was drawing (an area I called Rana'l, a collection of cities on a ragged seashore) since the others (we know who they are) were throwing ice cubes, napkin bits, and crumbs across the table. This continued for the next three meals I had with the group before I finally sat with another group, one from East Plainfield. One of their number had come across my map and told the rest of the group; since they turned out to be a happy bunch I basically stuck with them for the remainder of the conference.

After lunch, we had the first of our workshops. Again, we never stuck with our workshops; there were no schedules and everyone just flooded to wherever space was free. I ended up in a tobacco seminar that revolved around a hidden code of ethics in RJ Reynolds' corporate policy that, needless to say, was never heeded (the header even said VOLUNTARY CODE OF ADVERTISING ETHICS). Before the seminar, however, we had an icebreaker round, which many of you will know to be some sort of jive or game that helped you identify other members. This round, though, devolved into factional madness, with one party representing 'Kool-Aid' and turning out to be extremely obnoxious and the meek other representing 'Sunny D'. The first was 'If You Love Me You Smile': we had to get a member of the opposing team to smile by saying 'Honey, I love you, will you smile for me?'; the other will either smile and join the proposing team or hold it back and turn the proposing member down to force him or her to defect to the opposing team. Then, we played a human 'Guess Who' followed by a tournament of rock-paper-scissors, which all devolved into confusion and bickering. Needless to say, it ended rather quickly.

Then there was the first of our speakers, 'Dr Mike'. Although his message ('good choice, bad choice, my choice) applied well to the mass, especially the poor chap who was handed a toy car, radio, phone, and banknote to denote freedoms and then drawn back with a fishing line for each represented shortfall, his matter was quite juvenile; this was reflected in a wrap-up session.

Then there was dinner, and a hypnotist (I could have sworn that I'd seen him at the first or second Youth-to-Youth summit) came on-stage and selected a handful to subject to hypnosis. One of our members arose. Once he'd gathered his few, he put them in chairs and coerced them to sleep, and then he proceeded to force them to imagine a variety of scenarios. Some were tapped out when the hypnosis failed; some that remained slumped on each other. At the end, they all got up, evidently dazed at reality.

That ended, and we were down in the conference rooms at the base of the hotel for any of a few sessions of films and karaoke. I chose to go to the karaoke and, despite my nagging throat, registered to sing. I was called up to the surprise of many, especially those that had seen the map. One member in my travelling group responded with what people at PC call a 'glomp'; one wanted to dance. I shook them away and took the microphone, singing to emulate Garth Brooks as best I could without cracking. Although I got through with it and received a large ovation, it was nonetheless the first step to a nasty throat.

The following morning, we were in the ballroom for breakfast and a speaker — Josh Shipp. I'd seen him at my first Youth-to-Youth conference and expected him to carry on with his story of the exploding lasagne and the ensuing reaction from his mother: 'Bless your heart!' In other words, he was later told, he was supposedly stupid. That he was not, as I'd known; he did have attention deficit disorder, but he nevertheless carried out a witty and intelligent session with the mass. (I asked him during a recess whether he had actually appeared at the Youth-to-Youth conference; I was right.) Then came a 'town meeting', in which selected students would come up and share stories that explained why they were there. While plenty others were standing up, no-one at my table seemed willing to say anything. Then I had an idea come into my head as I wondered why the hell I was there. My idea was that everyone was unique and not fit to follow a mould (okay, I took the idea from another speaker in the mass), so I gathered up what to say about that and, trembling, got up to motion that I wanted a say. 'We are here because we are all unique!' I managed to proclaim. 'We are here as we choose to embrace our identity and thus use it to become leaders!' I nearly fainted, and the destruction of my voice was complete. Still, it was the largest ovation of any for the town meeting.

After lunch, there were two workshops, again subject to availability. I managed to get first into a seminar on prescription abuse; it included a video of a woman who drank Robitussin on a daily basis for a high as well as a teenager who hanged himself in a 'roid rage'. Once that cleared, I ended up in what was probably one of the most interesting sessions I have ever attended: perception. The speaker first sorted us out and had us come up with an answer as to his lowest maths score, manufacturer of his car, and nationality of his mother (97 percent, Nissan, Greek). Then, he presented us with a matrix of nine dots. I knew the trick; you had to connect them all using a certain amount of lines. The trick was that it was oft assumed that they had to be straight and you could not let the pen leave the paper before all dots are connected. However, he assured us that we had to see instructions as to these puzzles for what they literally were; the problem could be solved with one line with a paint roller or with zero straight lines by crumpling it or scribbling. That's something I should have showed my psychology course had this taken place before the senses class.

That finished, and we had two hours to ourselves, in which the East Plainfield students rehearsed a poem to read at dinner. Dinner came and they performed beautifully. Once dinner ended, you guessed it, it was another Motivational Productions feature. This one was called 'freedom', intertwining the tale of a kid whose father was at war and who was coping with a crowd that was notorious for partying.

Since there was no talent show, of course, we had the dance afterwards. The staff had been generous and let us stay out an hour longer than intended; I simply stayed out of the main frame and stayed with some Plainfield students who had a paper game going in the foyer. This did not, to my surprise, come without a few girls demanding rather flatly that I come in and dance with them (the ratio of girls to boys at this conference was 3:1, guaranteeing all the boys a potential partner, which many would see as beneficial to me). I did enter the ballroom a few times and prop the map out, but alas, I didn't have another follower. I decided once again, though, that I was not capable of getting in there and dancing.

The final day was uneventful, save for the loss of the coat and the lack of a map for the return trip, forcing me to call to mind a few interstates to get back home.

You know better, Max. What was this all for?

Again, you've beaten me to the kerb. You'll have noticed in the screed above that I was drawing a map again, and you also should have noticed that many of the gawks were from women.

Okay! I admit it! I used it to pick a few up. No, the decision to go wasn't prurient; I did learn from the conference, and I did increase some of my confidence as demonstrated by the karaoke session and the speech (albeit at the expense of my throat), and I was still without a thing to do but wander around, and I needed a few more ideas for another large map I've been planning. But yes, I caught on to the gawks and tried to run away with them. Sure, I didn't has much interest in the whole scenario this time, but if you go back in time, you'll find that most of the time I've drawn a map and demonstrated it at least one girl would respond. It's happened, first with little motive but to just brag, then with, I admit, a few other things in mind that I later wrote off as they proved to be too whimsical. I caught on to the notion that whatever I could offer would be a decent pick-up line.

I'm such an idiot. But hell, I did do something great. Anyway, now isn't the time to jump into an entry about this, Blue and Natsuki with the Dawson factor, and other things along the line that I can possibly think of. As I said, my throat's trashed, and I'm waiting for it all to set into stone before I can reach a viable conclusion.

Beauty gimmicks

2007-02-08T23:10:52Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6344725.stm

It's not very odd to see something like this happening, but the surprise of the news coming made sure that I didn't hold you lot over until I returned from the next youth summit, for which I leave tomorrow. As a result, we have a new rant on how the world has to be improved. By following the link you'll find that former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith, burdened with the death of her son, the spectacular failure of Trimspa (which we'll look at), and a new husband and daughter, has died today of causes yet undisclosed. This does not stop me, however, from inculpating a lot of gimmicks she's gone through — plastic surgery, pills, you name it. Smith is no hero, yet beauty gimmicks are worse.

Alongside the tendencies I've noticed in the past, pills, eating disorders, and plastic surgery are things that I can personally do without. First, we have pills and other 'medications' and regimens that promise spot reducing (Cortislim was nailed for this in particular). Many diet pills offered on television are often not evaluated by the FDA, yet their advertisers still aren't afraid to boast, with as much information they can ply us with about secret ingredients, herbs, and such, that they'll catalyse a dramatic yet seemingly safe drop in weight. The truth is that most of these pills just don't work — many of them are addictive or are toxic to the body. The most incriminating thing of all about them is the lingering history of the CDC diet, based on Herman Taller's Calories Don't Count book, which allowed you to eat as much as you wanted whilst taking tablets that really contained nothing but safflower oil.

Then there's plastic surgery. I can excuse this for the removal of cysts or severe weight, but to just reshape your face is something I question. Many times these surgeries leave the patient looking even more hideous than before, and a few times they actually addict the patient. Beauty consciousness is not an excuse to me, unless it cures something that can lead to infection or removes something that hampers normal movement. Not as bad as constructing the face, but still something to abhor, are breast implants (not reductions, as those actually releve pressure on the mammaries from what I hear) — do we have to go over the fact that they aren't a sexual organ but merely objects of eroticism in most beliefs? Simply put, and I admit that I've been stymied otherwise, if you're proud of how you look, you do look good. If not, you don't; it's not always in the eyes of the beholder.

Then, we have, quite unfortunately, eating disorders. This is not something we can get rid of easily, but I suppose it'll die once people start thinking for themselves. Not too recently, a model named Ana Carolina Reston died of heart failure due to anorexia, and at the time she had a strict vegetarian diet and weighed a measly 88 pounds (39 kilograms). This coincided with advisories put out by Milan and Madrid over model stature, the latter requiring a body mass index of at least 18 in order to be in the show. The lesson, folks, is that there is a thing called 'too thin', and if the tabloids and activist groups are the only other public forums shouting about it, I'm going to cry. The rest of the media will not necessarily bother with minimum weight or BMI; they'll do anything to get money, even if they inadvertently create a sex definition. Yes, I realise that there's too fat (circulatory failure in that territory too), but it's no use whittling girls to the bone or compelling them to whittle themselves.

Girls, I pray you, put down the pills, consult your legtitimate, certified doctor, and work out a healthy diet that encompasses as much of the food pyramid as possible. And exercise.