The life I need.

I play video games too much, and I should stop.

This will be the statement central to today's discussion, so read it carefully.

I've been gaming for a long time. I have fond memories, in fact, dating back to the halcyon days of 1999, playing our family's Sega- a racing game, which I sat watching for hours, transfixed by the ever-changing colours and dancing pixels. I didn't reason this at the time, though. Rather, gaming was simply an amusing way of passing the time, and could easily be likened to playing with Lego, or watching old episodes of Pokémon on tape.

Unlike Ash's nomadic adventures, or my beloved uniform plastic bricks, though, gaming has stuck with me until now. This in itself doesn't mean a great deal- adults who fished or skated as kids still indulge in these activities on a regular basis, don't they? And up until recently, I didn't give it much thought. With nearly half the world's population having played a Call of Duty game, and 'gaming' itself being more or less intrinsic of modern pop culture, it has always been easy enough to find like minded souls, and in this way, to justify several times over this habit and its implications- or lack there of, as I always figured.

Because practically everyone I know aged similarly to myself games. We game at home, we game at our friends' places, we game during the day, and into the small hours of the night. And when we aren't gaming we talk about gaming, think about gaming. We may hide from the stress of everyday life, of work and school and relationships, instead choosing to hide in a perfect, blissful place where we are granted absolute anonymity and the freedom to slam others, to 'make friends', to shoot, stab, kill and generally put our angst and worries behind us. Who wouldn't want this?

YouTube lies in the middle of what I believe to be the modern version of  Golding's "essential human illness".  A community where anyone can seek, and often find, worth in their lives, in the form of something as meaningless as a thumbs up. YouTube has bred a generation of kids searching so desperately to fit in that they will forgo having an actual opinion in favour of a comment or attitude that they know will earn them support. Support from who? A 16 year old in California, thousands of miles away, who happens to...what? Play the same game as you?

Practically no effort goes in to making a gameplay/commentary on YouTube. We might respect guys that post up huge scores, but who hasn't known the joys of a well-planned spawn trap in their life times? I am so fucking sick and tired of seeing people's comments as "nth nuke"- I don't care, and anyone who does really needs to take a good, long, hard look at themselves and the empty life they have. Because while video games might provide a few hours thrills at a time, deep down, we know it isn't doing us any good, and for me at least, almost any other activity gives me at the very least vague sense of fulfillment.

I am going to quit gaming. Let me rephrase: I am going to try and quit gaming. I realise that nothing is actually holding me back- this isn't smoking. I know no one is with me, but that's the point (except, apparently, Ukrainian Limbs). I will find other ways to fill my time, and I won't think longingly back to these bygone days with nostalgia. I will feel sad, considering what I could have achieved in this time, in lieu of slaying Old King Doran, killing thousands of SpetSnaz operatives, surviving several zombie apocalypses. Gaming will one day die, and I won't be entrenched in the pitiful community that faithfully obeys it when that happens; I will have transcended gaming altogether.

Thanks for reading.

Differentiation- Your calculator is the scene of the crime.

An extract from my script for Differentiation, a mathematical comedy that parodies Inception.  Enjoy.

Differentiation

 

By William

Munn 

INT. PHARMACY - CONTINUOUS
Row upon row of wooden shelves holding hundreds of dusty
glass bottles of all shapes and colors. At the far end, a
portly 40-year-old man rises from behind his desk, beckoning.
This is YUSUF.

Yusuf: So, you are seeking a mathematician 

(Cobb nods)

       To calculate problems for a job.

Cobb: As well as to be our runner for Cantamath.

Yusuf: You know, I rarely go into the field, Mr Cobb.

Cobb: Well, we would need you there to tailor equations specific to our needs.

Yusuf: Which are?

Cobb: Great complexity.

Yusuf: (nodding)Ah... A function within a function- two sets of brackets.

Cobb: (leaning forward) Three.

Yusuf: Not possible... that many functions within functions would be far too baffling for a non-Korean student.

Cobb: It is...possible. You'd just need to use a graphics calculator.

Yusuf: A powerful graphics calculator.

(holds a rectangular object up to the light)

       This, I think, would be a good place to start. I see it every day.

Cobb: Where?

(Yusuf beckons to a door. On it is written "D12")

Yusuf: Or, perhaps you will not want to see.

Cobb: (beckoning) After you...

INT. CLASS ROOM, BURNSIDE HIGH - CONTINUOUS A class room with ROWS of low DESKS. Each with a school student. They type numbers and symbols on their calculators. An ELDERLY BALD MAN watches over them.

Eames: (counting) 18, 19, 20- mostly Asian. Bloody hell.

Yusuf: They come here every day, to practice calculus.

Yusuf nods at the Elderly Bald Man, who moves to the nearest desk. Reaches out to the STUDENT. Gives his face a FIRM SLAP. The student does not even stir.

Yusuf: See? Very diligent.

Cobb: How long do they work?

Yusuf: Three, four hours every day.

Cobb: How many papers?

Yusuf: With this calculator? About 40 papers, each and every day.

Saito surveys the room, appalled. 

Saito: Why do they do it?

Yusuf: Tell him, Mr Cobb.

Cobb: After a while, it becomes the only way you can be challenged at school.

Yusuf: Can you still use the Binomial Theorem, Mr Cobb?

Cobb stares at the students, still uneasy.

Eames: They come to do calculus?

Cobb turns to the Elderly Bald Man, who looks fondly at his dreamers.  

Elderly Bald Man: No. They come to live the calculus. The algebra has become their reality. 

The Elderly Bald Man pokes a crooked finger at Cobb's chest.  

Elderly Bald Man: Who are you to say otherwise?Who are you?

How to do well in Call of Duty

These are the integral steps which, if followed correctly, will almost guarantee a great score in any Call of Duty game. I have compiled these based on years of experience with the best-selling franchise.

1. Be host. You'll know if you are host because next to your name (Viet Will) there will be 4 green bars, and if you are like me and live in New Zealand, your teammates' and enemies' connections won't be terribly god (i.e. red or yellow).

2. Laugh as your enemies flee helplessly, safe in the knowledge that your every shot is bound to hit. You are host, after all. This is your world, and you make the rules.

3. Sit back and enjoy your utter dominace, and the ensuing mass rage quitting. What a legend.

Hell design

I still don't believe in hell, but if it did exist, I'm pretty sure this is what it would look like. Took me about half an hour. Enjoy.

The Alexander Supertramp article

In case you aren't entirely familiar with Alexander Supertramp, I'll summarise: It was the self-assigned alter ego of one Chirstopher McCandless, a young American college graduate who, confunded by a material good-orientated, greed-hungry capitalist society, hiked into the Alaskan "wilderness", sporting little more than a semi-automatic rifle, a sack of rice and more than a few youthful ideals.

Needless to say, McCandless died.

His was made a famous life, and death, following the release of a biography by Jon Krakauer, and later a film. Both these texts, though (jeez, I am horrified by my adopting of NZQA's bullshit phrasing) painted the portrait of a disaffected, bright, humanitiarian, Thoreau-like young man, whereas a source not bound the constraints by a novelist's poetic license like Wikipedia represents an entirely different school of thought, as it appears. Reality.

And what a harsh once McCandless must face up to. His apparent total lack of preparation and general ineptitude where a hostile place like Alaska was concerned, compounded by his romanticisation in Into the Wild provoking many Alaskan natives to lash out. I have picked the best of them and pasted it below, from Sherry Simpson:
 
"Astounded by page after page of such writings, we counted the number of people identified in the notebooks. More than 200 had trekked to the bus since McCandless’s death, and that didn’t account for those who passed by without comment. Think of that: More than 200 people, many as inexperienced as McCandless, had hiked or bicycled along the Stampede Trail to the bus — and every one of them had somehow managed to return safely... Among my friends and acquaintances, the story of Christopher McCandless makes great after-dinner conversation. Much of the time I agree with the "he had a death wish" camp because I don’t know how else to reconcile what we know of his ordeal. Now and then I venture into the "what a dumbshit" territory, tempered by brief alliances with the "he was just another romantic boy on an all-American quest" partisans. Mostly I’m puzzled by the way he’s emerged as a hero, a kind of privileged-yet-strangely-dissatisfied-with-his-existence hero.... For many Alaskans, the problem is not necessarily that Christopher McCandless attempted what he did – most of us came here in search of something, didn’t we? Haven’t we made our own embarrassing mistakes? But we can’t afford to take his story seriously because it doesn’t say much a careful person doesn’t already know about desire and survival. The lessons are so obvious as to be laughable: Look at a map. Take some food. Know where you are. Listen to people who are smarter than you. Be humble. Go on out there – but it won’t mean much unless you come back. This is what bothers me – that Christopher McCandless failed so badly, so harshly, and yet so famously that his death has come to symbolize something admirable, that his unwillingness to see Alaska for what it really is has somehow become the story so many people associate with this place, a story so hollow you can almost hear the wind blowing through it. His death was not a brilliant fuck-up. It was not even a terribly original fuck-up. It was just one of the more recent and pointless fuck-ups."

I want to make a neat, contradictory summarising statement, but so succinct yet so very very accurate is this criticism that I struggle to fault her logic. Yes, McCandless was a dumbass, and people more knowledgeable on the topic could doubtless spend all day taking to pieces his poor decisions, leading him from one bad situation to the next. I want to say, "yet cruelly analyse his ideology and actions though she may, Simpson must admit that McCandless has achieved something..." But what? We knew what no food and no map already led to.

We just didn't know anyone would do it.