Dear Playstation

I'm sorry that I was so prejudicial towards you in the past. We haven't always gotten along and I know that is mostly my fault. The truth of the matter is you are the most awesome thing in the entire world and I've had more fun with you than I have on just about any other game system.

Your sleek new design, albeit inconvenient, demands well deserved attention. You don't stand upright and you negate the ability to pile anything on top of you; you have forced me to rearrange my desk and use a large portion of it simply to have you, but you are worth it.

PS3, you do not look better than my 360. You don't have the classics of the Wii. You will not play the PS2 games of many years' past. Your controller design is unchanged from an imperfect design. Why do I love you, you ask?

Free downloadable demos.

I was never the kind of guy who downloaded demos for my PC, but this is because my PC is used for so many other things. It has videos and word processors and design programs and entire games loaded on to it that never look as good as they could and play rather choppily. For a machine that cost two grand, my computer started to suck awfully fast.

But you, Playstation, are, by definition, designed for playing. And so I play. Some of your demos are not fun at all (Condemned 2, although scary, was hard to control and all too easy to get killed by something you couldn't see. Maybe your demo shouldn't be the level where your character is drunk. Maybe I just think 1st person shooters are lame). Some of your demos are so fun that I want to buy them when I otherwise would not (X-Men Origins was beyond fun, Wet was surprisingly entertaining, Conan is a $14.99 discount buy). This last point is the most brilliant marketing strategy ever, especially for a more consumer conscious culture.

I don't want to take a $70 risk on a game that I don't know that I will like. If I were to buy Conan at its opening price, I would be disappointed and be less likely to buy a new game before I let it become preowned and dropped in a discount bin, or if it was a good game, wrapped in a "classics" package 3 years later. I would not buy X-Men, but now probably will. I would not even consider Wet, though now I will shop around for it. And I wouldn't have bought these demos if they hadn't been free, either.

This is why I love you, Playstation. I love you in the worst way. You make me want to spend money on things you've shown me I will enjoy, and I thank you for it. I see the marketing plan and I don't fall victim to it, I support it.



Thank you to those of you who made me buy one.

Desensitized

I've come to the conclusion that people are twats and desensitization is a good thing. This is not to be confused with bastardification.

Let me give you an example. We eat me, or at least a lot of us do. That meat comes from a living, breathing, and yes, thinking and feeling animal. It wants to live and hurts when it is killed. This is a fact of life. It's the food chain. We kill things and we eat them. Being humane isn't about not doing what we're designed to do because something gets hurt. Being humane is about being respectful for the life that ended to keep yours going. Look at most wild animals. A dog will shake the bejesus out of its prey to break its neck. A cat will go for the jugular to bleed it out as fast as possible. Given the tools that they have, this is a very good way to do it. It is the humane way to do it.

So understanding that animals are killed, bled out, cut into pieces and shipped to your grocer is something that I think is positive quality. Being able to see it and watch it and understand its necessity (for what portion of the process is entirely necessary. I do understand that a degree of slaughtering animals is a cost/time analysis) makes us better people because it keeps us from being ignorant. Enjoying it is another story. That's being a bastard.

That being said, if watching that sort of thing turns you off meat all together, then you're appropriately sensitive. What bothers me is the people who are bothered by killing animals but are comfortable eating them. It's the cold truth about the world that allows us to demand to make it better. If you disagree with killing animals but want to eat them then I urge you to tell someone how to kill animals without it being uncomfortable for you. The fact is, you can't do it. And if you say, "oh, just wait for them to die on their own" be prepared for less meat to cost way more. Animals that die on their own die in one of 4 ways, in order of likelihood:

1. killed by another animal
2. get sick and die
3. die in an accident,
4. or die of old age.

The maximum yield of meat from these events is thus

1. none (another animal ate it)
2. none (it's diseased. Unless you want to eat "we think we cooked what killed it out of it" beef)
3. variable (depends when you find it)
4. about half of what it could be (ever notice how old people are a lot skinnier than younger people?)

So stop whining about how we have to kill animals while you're busy grilling up another delicious steak. It's the circle of life.

If you don't like the meat debate, how about the encouraged desensitization we go through constantly? What about war? You can't watch an animal be killed for food but you can support the slaughter of a nation of people who aren't even necessarily fighting a cause, but are defending their country? How about our desensitization toward our fellow man? We hear about countless violent crimes every day and all we do is lock our doors. If you gave a shit about "humanity" you'd do something to stop it. If you cared about every life you wouldn't only be looking out for yourself. Start a neighbourhood watch. Investigate the crime. Make sure these criminals are put away. Feed the hungry. House the homeless. Hell, start small and give those cold bastards waiting for the bus a lift in your toasty 8 seater SUV.

Oh, I forgot you're doing your part by having a "fuel efficient" SUV. You're a real humanitarian.

Be Married

I just finished catching up with one of the few people I met last year at school. When I first met her I thought to myself "now here is a very attractive, smart, cheerful, bright, all around positive woman my age and she's sitting down next to me and talking to me. This can't be happening."

I soon found out in that semester that she was engaged to be married this past summer. After that, I had no problems talking to her. There really wasn't anything for me to be nervous about. There wasn't anything on the line.

I tried to work myself up to talk to this other girl in the same class. Well, the day I was going to ask her if she wanted to do something was the day she stopped coming to class. I emailed her and asked her what was up and suggested that we get together. She said we should and we back and forth'd a bit, and then I never heard from her again.

This is the case of so many single girls. Hook up with a single girl, get rejected. Talk to a single girl, she leaves the class. Friend of a friend, potential lesbian. Primed for a blind date, mysterious disappearance. Try and sit next to a girl in class, she moves to the other side of the room.

My conclusion is thus: Fuck single girls. One of the most fun times I've ever had in my life is stealing a girl from her boyfriend. Yeah, that ended poorly, and the type of girl that'll leave her boyfriend for me is the type of girl that'll leave me for her new boyfriend, but shit, that wasn't so bad, was it? So maybe the plan should be to subvert boyfriend "authority" and steal a girl who is already taken.

For all the talk I do about not wanting to do marketing because I don't like the idea of a competitive market, I sure do like winning. I like being better than someone else. And watching a social dynamic shift in my favour is the highest form of entertainment I have ever experienced.

Maybe I am enough of a bastard for marketing.

Ego

I was relieved to find out the other day that my self esteem issues are no more. In the past rejection would lead me to believe there was something the matter with me, something that needed to be corrected. But now i can safely say beyond any doubt that I'm pretty awesome. I'm not the greatest guy in the world, but I'm certainly not the worst.

But what I worry is that I've gone from thinking too little of myself to thinking too much of myself; as if I have all of the answers to everything for everyone. Sure, there are some things like forcing the homeless into employment and putting turnstiles at the LRT stations to more strictly enforce payment and generate revenue, but those are large scale problems that have their own endless subset lists of individual problems, which I'm sure I could deal with in a very stern "fuck you if you don't follow the rules" manner.

However, there are people's personal problems that I seem to think I have the answers to as well. Some people agree with my solutions and some people reject them very strongly. My buddy got a second job as a clerk the other day. Well done. You gotta push through this recession. You can't afford to be picky. In the words of Meat Loaf "You don't have a lot, but it's all that you've got, and you can turn it into more than it seems." It confuses me that some people don't accept this philosophy.

I don't know, there's a time to be picky and there's a time where you need to accept things as they come. For example, 5 years ago you could reject a job because your heart wasn't in it or the money wasn't there. Now, take the fucking job! 2 years ago you could shop around for the right location to live, the right price, the right people. Now, you will live in shit-central with a meth dealer because it's better than being on the street. Six months ago you could go anywhere, see anything, be anyone. You could afford all of that. The world was nothing but possibilities. Now all we have is each other.

But that's just me. I figured it was just normal. Automatic. I understand how people can put their careers ahead of other people. A career can be what defines a person in their eyes. But when the kitchen is out of steak you don't sit there and starve! At least I wouldn't. I suppose some people really like steak...

We're paying for WHAT?!

Apparently we've been paying for sex-change operations for years! Now, I need to come right out and say this now: I am not opposed to people having these operations. You want to be a girl? Be a girl. You want to be a boy? Be a boy. Gender isn't as restrictive as it used to be and we should be free to take advantage of that without prejudice. That being said, why the fuck are we paying for it?! I'm no mathematician, but 18-70G per operation times roughly 20 people a year is anywhere from $360 000 to $1.4 million dollars every year. Forget programs to reintegrate the homeless into society. Fuck updating highschool textbooks from the 60s. Hell, let's ignore hiring more police or funding hospitals' emergency care. Marc wants to become Marcy and we need to pay for him/her to do it.

I understand that nowadays that isn't exactly a backbreaking amount of money for the government, but there are plenty of other things we could be spending that money on! Not to mention, why do I have to pay for other people to change the way they are because they're not satisfied with their body? I don't pay people to go to the gym. I don't pay people to eat properly. I don't pay for people to shop. The bottom line is that I don't pay for other people's vanity (unless we're going out...). So why is it so important that we "reassign" people their genders?

If you want to do it, go ahead and do it. But don't be looking for a handout. Especially not now.

I'm no expert...

So, I'm reading this article on legalizing marijuana and I don't think people have thought this one through very much.

First of all, I wouldn't consider Mexicans that sell weed a "cartel." Sure, you might seize a million pounds a year in a single state. If that's what you seized, how much pot do you think the Mexicans are bringing over? They'd have to be driving semi-trucks across the border full of marijuana. And for that kind of transportation, you'd have to be making a lot of trips to make it profitable. We're talking weekly deliveries. We're talking similar to large grocery stores. If this is the case, then sure, I can see one needing a cartel to keep that connected and running smoothly. But why not then do something radical like don't let the trucks full of drugs into the country! I know that you can't stop and search every truck that drives up from Mexico, but you can! How many truckfuls of Mexican produce come up every day? Can you really not tell whose camper is full of weed? It's the one with the leaves sticking out from under the big canvas tarp! As a guy who knows nothing about obtaining drugs, I still understand that weed is cheap. Kids buy it. I also understand that gasoline is not. So you have to transport a shit-ton of weed from Mexico to the US to make the distribution of it profitable. You have to have a warehouse to store it and distribute it to the dealers and the dealers have to travel from the warehouse (unless you make your truck make multiple deliveries which can generate suspicion and cost a lot in fuel). Then the warehouse takes and cut and the dealers take their cuts and the drivers take cuts... This isn't a lucrative sale. This is a promotional sale. This is the product that gets people to shop with you until they find the big ticket items. But being in a cartel is about not being known by the consumer (lest you be known by the police). However, if th cartel does use inexpensive weed as a segue into the harder, more profitable drugs a) don't lie to us and say that marijuana trafficking is a lucrative cartel-worthy business, and b) oh wait, you have to lie because if you said it was a way of getting kids started then legalizing it wouldn't be a solution and if you legalized one drug you would have to legalize them all.

The other thing no one considers is that illegality is the alure of drugs. It is an act of rebellion, and if the government says, "toke away, kids!" the kids would not oblige.

I gotta roll on out, but think about it.

Loblaws Hates America

Well, Canada, too. Down at the booze-office we've had our hours cut substantially due to the recession. Though I can't help but notice that rather than people buying less food and alcohol, they are actually buying more. The store is busier than ever. This is because middle aged people with real jobs understand that they might not be making as much and so food is more necessary than other things (the booze helps to forget).
I also went to the movies the other day. The Watchmen. Friday night. Opening weekend. Half a theatre. HALF! There hasn't been a movie worth seeing in 3 months and only half a theatre can be bothered to go see this one?
It is, you see, young people who go to see movies. It is young people who spend their money on on frivolous entertainment; the very foundation of the American economy. These young people work for The Man who is tightening his belt to keep his pants up against the weight of his wallet.

Loblaws can obviously afford to pay us more, but corporate greed keeps the money concentrated in a small few's hands. This is why we're in a recession. It's ironic how big business is the thing which America prides itself the most on while it simultaneously is the only thing that can bring it down.

So, dear Man, give the kids some money and restore the economy.