Infamous and Flying in Video Games

Infamous is a fantastic game. I became addicted immediately upon playing the demo. The reason? Like the levitation skill in Morrowind, the Infamous developers wisely gave the character Cole the ability to float using electricity. After I completed the demo, I had dreams I was Cole, floating down from the tops of buildings, some kind of guardian angel bringing justice in my wake, zapping the bad guys (known as Reapers and Dustmen), and resuscitating victims of the plague.

Not to complain, but Bethesda (the developer of Morrowind and Oblivion) was stupid to exclude the levitation skill when they created Oblivion, the sequel to Morrowind. Flying, floating, gliding, levitating -- these are magical abilities that no game should lack. As I marvel at my addiction to Infamous, and I observe the formation of an attachment to the new Batman game (which utilizes the Bat's ability to glide), I see a common thread. I feel no strange addictions to Oblivion (no levitating), yet the passion endures for Morrowind (levitation).

I understand it all now. Flying is the key. When Bethesda decided to scratch levitation from the list of skills for the incredibly forgetful world in Oblivion, they were essentially demoting the title from awesome to crapsome.

Man has dreamed of flight since his first glimpse of a bird taking to the sky. Do you remember your nightly dreams? If you do, which dreams are the best? Did you say flying dreams? I know you said flying dreams because those are the best dreams. They're about freedom, escape, joy, and power, and so much more. Even if everything else in your life sucks, when you have a dream about being able to fly, the most magical thing happens in your soul -- something to do with hope and not being constrained by earth and all its woes.

The caveat here is that the flying-type skill must be in direct defiance to gravity. It can't be out in space. It also has to be in human form, it can't be a man flying in a jet or anything of that nature. Because the dream isn't to be trapped in a jet or any other contraption (though I thank you Wright brothers), it's to be a person who can fly. Or float. Or levitate.

So anyway. That's the reason Oblivion, which could have been as awesome as Morrowind, failed to live up to its potential. It's why the new Batman game is next on my list, why Super Mario 3 was so amazing (the raccoon tail, remember?), and it's also why I had to buy Infamous immediately after playing the demo and having dreams about it.

The other night I was, of course, playing Infamous. I came to the quest where Cole must climb the tower of junk in the middle of the slum district with his friend Zeke. At this stage, the floating ability makes it possible to reach the highest platform, using a series of steel beams and discarded neon signs.

So as I was guiding Cole up the tower, Stoker was sitting next to me, watching, and I kept missing the last beam. I basically ran in circles enough to earn the Frequent Flyer Trophy (something for the online PS3 community) because I couldn't turn Cole to catch the beam just right. It was frustrating.

I probably went in circles ten or twelve times before I finally let Stoker take the controller to try it. He'd been watching, judging me to be an incompetent player I'm sure, thinking secretly (I'm sure), that he could do it--because that's what you do when you're watching someone else play a video game. You think, "Man are they an idiot? I could do it in like three seconds." Not that Stoker would EVER think me an idiot. But he was thinking, "I could do this. Piece of pie."

I gave him the controller and thought, "Good. Now he'll know how much skill it actually takes to master the floating ability and he'll have no choice but to admire me." I told him which buttons did what, and sat back to observe him as he failed to guide Cole to the top platform.

But he succeeded on his first try.

Now, you're probably thinking that I acted like a brat for being slightly humiliated--after all, Stoker hadn't played Infamous until that moment. I don't deny that I normally would have said something snide or excused my inability to accomplish this apparently easy feat with the complaint that my wrists were tired, or my thumb had started to hurt, or I had eye-fatigue. But I didn't do any of that, because you know what, sometimes it's cool to let other people be heroes.

Yes, I'm that great. I can let others feel that they're superior to me. But only because deep down, I KNOW that I'm the best.

Ha ha.

Stoker immediately gave the controller back to me, feeling very smug inside, I just know it. I said to him, "The floating ability is addicting, isn't it?"

And he said, "Yeah, it is." And there was a look of longing in his eyes to keep on floating. To glide down from incredibly high buildings, to grind across electrical wires between buildings and launch into the sky like a bird, and skate over monorail tracks like a human rail car. Oh yes. It's a great feeling.

Climate Change Is Good But Rackets Bother Me.

Been awhile.

Things have been hectic. That's no excuse, I know, I know.

Summer's nearly over. I'm glad about that. Nashville is no place for summer. July wasn't so bad, because it was cool most of the month and it rained nearly every day. Thank goodness for that "cool Canadian air mass" that settled over the south. I'm pro-climate change if it's going to turn the south Mediterranean or Canadian or whatever.

I was about to write about this racket I've observed in Nashville, but then I thought better of it. I was about to expose an injustice, but it's only an injustice in my eyes I'm sure, and let's be honest, I'm no crusader. I'm always on the verge of being a crusader, but then I either get too lazy or too wise, I don't know which. I haven't the endurance to be a real crusader. I always fizzle.

But, boy, do rackets bother me.


P.S. I promise not to leave you for four months again.

Why Make Men Work for a Look? Just Give Them the Summer Dress and End the Charade.

My friends, you can't believe how ecstatic I am to have summer dress season upon us. Already the girls are wearing them, strolling down streets with their breasts spilling out of the spaghetti strap nightmares. Every step they take nearly graces other passerbys with butt cheeks or more. Why even wear a dress at all? I ask you. Why not simply wear bra and underwear? Why not go a step further and simply take the mystery out of it and go nude?

What is the point of clothes, I wonder. It's simply an imagined commandment from a non-existent God (as we've begun to discover, after all). To paraphrase: and God fashioned clothes for them out of animal skins. See, it's been forced upon us by a figurative Creator. There's no reason for us to wear clothes. We are all enlightened enough by now to realize that the beauty and art of the human form should be shared and adored by everyone. It's simply a left over, prudish, Victorian edict that we cover ourselves. We're beyond that now. We now see how unhealthy the Victorian perspective was, how it perverted values and turned out a population of warped individuals who somehow naively believed that each person influenced society by their actions.

We've arrived, my friend. Here we are, in the modern century, where we now know that each man (and woman, let us not forget) IS an island. The ancients, the poets, the great thinkers of those backwards generations had it all wrong. What I do has no bearing on anyone else. If a woman wants to wear a thong and a bra as her daily attire, no one should raise a voice against her. I mean, who does that hurt? Really?

In fact, the other day I went shopping for some new lingerie because I'M going to really give the fashion world a shake. Remember the episode of Seinfield with the bra-less wonder? When Elaine gives Cindy Whoever a bra as a present and she wears it as a top? That's where I'm going. I've got the body for it, why not? I mean, I never feel so valued as when men ogle me. I love nothing more than to walk into a room and have every head turn and give me the once or twice over. It makes me feel so powerful.

Married men, old men, fathers with daughters, my own father, priests, gay men, I want them all to want me. Why stop there? I want all the women to want me too. There are no boundaries when it comes to sex appeal.

The truly enlightened individual does not need clothes out in the world. Society. Family. Self-respect. Any respect. None of these are required for true happiness. So let us unravel each of them.

A Narrow Miss

Some people on Facebook were teasing me about hiding in the basement when the tornado sirens are going. And I admit it, I felt a little silly. But later on, when I was watching the news, I saw that a tornado had touched down uncomfortably close to my neighborhood.

I'm posting this here to show just HOW close. I've blacked out all the street names for my protection (of course). It took me hours to do this because I don't know much about Photoshop. I thought a funny and clever thing to do would be to change everything to Candyland names, but that would have taken me days to figure out, so forget about it.

Classics: App Heaven

So far, the best app (I feel like such a dork when I say that) I've downloaded is the Classics app. When I bought it, it was .99 cents. What a bargain. Like ten books for .99 cents! They're classics, so, I mean if you found copies of them at a used book store you could probably get some of them for that much, but I'm talking about portability here.

My favorite author just did a review of the Kindle on his website, and it tempted me. But really there's no contest now. I have an Ipod Touch and I can put books on there! Smaller, more portable, and it makes a cool page turny sound when you turn the page BY TOUCHING THE SCREEN. And you turn back the page by swiping your screen in the other direction!

I am still in love with the magic of the touch screen, yes. It's very enthralling. I'm sorry, but that's the truth of it.

When you're done reading and you press the home button, it puts in a bookmark and then you go back to your bookshelf and there's your book, with a little red bookmark in it. It's beautiful.

I know it's weird to get excited about a virtual bookshelf and a program that disconnects me from the actual textures and sense of reading a book, because I'm very into the reality of books. But it's fun. It's different. And I have real copies of most of the books. But think of it. I'm on a long flight and I don't want to tote around ten books. Oh, look here, in my Ipod I have twelve books!

And I think they add more, and the additions are FREE once you've bought the app. I'm in heaven.

I Was Lying When I Said Agency Wars Is Cool Game

Can I take back everything I said about Agency Wars? I take it back. What a rip! The game is worse than a "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel.

Let me explain why I now loathe it. I upgraded to the 250 version (this has to do with reward points. If you do that, you can buy a very powerful gun -- you need the gun because if you don't have it, you continuously get robbed and never make any money), but I accidentally hit the WRONG button on my Ipod and ended up with TWO of the same gun! (Because I got the gun that only cost 100 reward points, dumb choice I know). What's the good of two of the same gun*?!! AND I CAN'T SELL IT! So much for "superb in-game economics" or whatever their line is on their dumb App page. Also, you have the option of "buying a passport" when you travel so you don't "get assassinated."** These passports aren't cheap. I buy them. But I still get assassinated. Nice work. Jerks.

There you have it.

Enough about mind-numbing role-playing games***. For my birthday I bought all five of the Chronicles of Prydain. I was worried that I had been silly when I first read them and would find them lacking, like I sort of did with the David Eddings series the Belgariad when I tried to reread it during college. I began reading The Book of Three today (the first book in Prydain) and I am not disappointed. Maybe all those years studying English lit. have worn off and I am back to my normal self who can enjoy a good story. Ha ha. Sad, isn't it? How college can taint your world view and socialize you to be a cultural elitist with snobby opinions that are direct reflections of the opinions held by your professors?

I'm kidding, of course.

No, I'm kidding that I'm kidding. I want to go back for my PhD, but I fear that if I do, I'll be suffocated by the stupidity surrounding me.



*In the context of the game, two of the same gun is pointless. In real life, two of the same gun might be nice. I might like to have two AR-15s or two AK-47s or even TWO 1911s. But in this game, it's redundant and useless and even MORE of a waste of real life money than if I hadn't made a mistake and bought the more powerful of the high damage guns.
**Overuse of "scare" quotes intentional to illustrate irritation about game company's lies.
***Here's a question: why do I even WANT to play those games when I have a PS3? Or a computer and can play Guild Wars? I'm sick, that's what I am. Sick!

Agency Wars. M16 Agent #78930. Shaken, Not Stirred.

Stoker told me last week he'd gotten a little something for my birthday and asked me to not look at the bank account. I thought, Ok, he's gotten me a book, or a video game, or tickets to the soccer game. Because it was a little something.

So the little something he gave me last Friday turned out to be an Ipod Touch. Excellent present and I haven't been able to stop caressing it and downloading apps and playing games on it. We're Verizon users and will never switch to AT&T and thus the Iphone is useless to me. But the Touch works for us. Stoker has one as well.

I'm addicted to Agency Wars.

It's a role playing game where you pick an agency, CIA, M16, KGB or one from a variety of others that I'd never heard of until yesterday, and then you go on missions for the agency. You earn money and buy weapons and sell weapons to other real life players. If you have the Iphone, you can apparently go to real time locations for missions--I assume it's all legal and whatnot ha ha ha. I played it for too many hours yesterday and I'm embarrassed about it, and all I have to show for it is that I'm a level 13.

One of the first things I did was try to attack Jungmaster, a level twenty million or something. As you can probably imagine, there was really no contest. He had some outrageous gun and I think I only had a measly handgun or something (in the game guns are one-offs, like a WaltheN PPK). Jungmaster won the fight and then of course he had to turn around and teach me a lesson by actually KILLING me. And it did teach me a lesson. Thereafter I only attacked other agents who were a level or two below me. Unfair, but I need the money and experience in order to rise in the ranks (new goal, reach level 30 million and kill Jungmaster).

It's not personal, it's business.

Others have attacked me and some of them have won. But I add them to my hitlist and if I ever surpass them in weaponry or by leveling, I get my revenge. Oh yes, I get revenge, my friend.

The interface of the game resembles one of those blue screen type programs you always see in detective/FBI/24 type shows. I doubt the real-life databases look like that (who knows?), but it lends an air of sophistication to the game despite reality, and in some ridiculous, romantic part of your brain, you feel like you COULD be a government spy engaging in espionage and other James Bond tom-foolery without actually being in danger. So you get all the good part of the fantasy sans the threat of death or torture. In short, I feel that the game rocks.

Yes. All morning I've been devising a way to get to a free WiFi location so I can check on my status. It seems that while offline, others can attack your agent and steal your money (JERKS!). What comes around goes around. Anyone who messes with me will be dealt with, I assure you.

On a different note, my main criticism is that their server kicks me off quite often. I could forgive this if the game was free (like Guild Wars), but since the full game is not free, I can't forgive it. Another improvement would be to enhance the in-game selling feature. To sell to other players, you simply list your price then the item disappears from your inventory. If the item is ever sold, the amount appears in your account. But you never hear for sure, and since you're constantly making money, it's hard to be certain if you've ever sold the item.

Anyway, as you can see the game is quite enthralling. For me anyway.

Add me (other agents know what that means. If you're not already an agent, become one and add me)*.




*What it means is that in the game, to do certain harder missions, you have to have a number of contacts. It's hard to make contacts because for some ridiculous reason, you can only add them with the agent number (or some other intrusive way like with an email address). Basically you have to go online and advertise your agent number in some way. So get the game and add me. And then we can do joint missions. Cassi, this means you.

Looking for a Scene from Superman, I Find Death Cab for Cutie

I was thinking of downloading "Can You Read My Mind" because I'm almost 31 and old people such as myself like that kind of song, even though as a child we ridiculed it. But I agree. I mean, I'd wonder if Superman could read my mind too.

I wanted to watch the scene when Superman tells Lois that he has X-Ray vision because it seems like he tells Lois she's wearing pink underwear, but maybe I'm making that up. And I've always thought it ridiculous that Lois would wear pink underwear, if indeed it's true. Only dorks wear pink underwear. Pink is the worst color in the world unless it is part of the sunset, the sunrise, or in a flower (including blossoms). And I will sometimes make exceptions for really masculine men wearing pink, just because I find the contradiction appealing.

All I could find was this cool video. And I admit it, it gave me chills. Good love stories are enduring, right? I mean Superman gives up his powers to be with the woman he loves. You can't not let yourself be a little bit melted to think of that kind of sacrifice. Love is only gorgeous when it has made sacrifices. Indulgent love, love that has compromised its values for itself is hideous. I guess in that case it's not really love because real love IS sacrifice.

Anyway, this video was cool. I've no idea the true author, thanks to the endless chain of youtube copycats, but whoever did the editing made sure it was beautiful.

Recently Read: Posts from Goodreads Reviews "Chekhov: Selected Stories"

There's something about Chekhov. I remember reading a review or an essay about him in The New Yorker a long time ago, back when I read the New Yorker (I don't anymore, pretentious jerks ha ha ha), and I remember finding it interesting. But I assumed that Chekhov would be a stuffy old bookish writer whose work I would find boring. And then I began reading, recently, some of Anna Karenina. Some sort of fever started in me to consume as much Russian literature as possible. So I bought this small used copy of Chekhov's work, the very edition you see here. The first story I read was "The Father." I read it quickly and then I read another story, "Peasants," and I was enthralled by his writing and the portrayals of the Russian people. He has such skill with language and my only regret is that I can't read his work in the original Russian.

At the same time I read A Moveable Feast by Hemingway (an amazing book), and I was very pleased to read his impressions of the Russians. He said of Chekhov that people had told him that Katherine Mansfield wrote great short stories, but once he had read Chekhov, Hemingway realized that Mansfield's stories were the equivalent of an old maid's tales (to recall from memory). One man's opinion. I have not read much Mansfield, but I can say that Chekhov is so widely read for a reason. I love his writing and have bought many more collections of his writing since then.

I'm not a huge fan of the short story genre, necessarily. But if you read his work it feels loosely strung together, a vast mural of the late 19th century Russia. It's quite beautiful.

My favorites so far are "Peasants," "He Understood," "The Dance Pianist,"In Exile," and "A Cure for Drinking."

Recently Read: Posts from Goodreads Reviews "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"

I loved it, even though I didn't give it five stars. I didn't give it five because at the end I wasn't blown away or something. The end just comes kind of natural like you'd expect, because it's the end of the day. And you know that Ivan is kind of like an animal now, and all he has are days and he doesn't think too hard about the future because if he did, he would go crazy. I've heard that Gulag is a very depressing story, this one is kind of a downer, but not like Gulag, probably. You end up loving Ivan because even amidst this horrible, completely undeserved sentence, he still has a heart and exhibits altruistic behavior.

Sometimes Solzhenitsyn's writing reminds me of Salinger, and I liked that. At times he would speak from this place of "the prisoners, the men" and show their rage at other prisoners who were messing things up for everyone else, or their rage at the injustice and stupidity of the warders. All you can think through the whole book is about how cold it is. Obviously the cold is a strong character, the main element shaping their lives, even stronger than the bastard communist government.

There were loads of things I liked about this story. I like Solzhenitsyn's writing style, although I have to admit I feel weird saying that, knowing he himself was a prisoner and this book was derived from that experience. But it's true, he's a good writer. I ended up liking Ivan, and pretty much all the characters except for Fetyukov, who we're not supposed to like because he's a vulture and a wimp.

I will probably read more of his books because of his skill with words. My big regret is that I can't read Russian and of all possible languages I would choose to learn for the sake of literature, Russian is the language I want to know. I checked it out and Rosetta Stone costs like a million dollars. I'm 30 and my brain is set in stone. Is there any hope?