On Video Game Tactics as an Old Man

In honour of the new Xbox’s release this coming morning, I dug out an old blog post I never finished writing, and thought I'd chuck a rough version of it up here.
Enjoy!:

I have become quite addicted of late to the hand picked articles over at Longform, and today I read a great article about Obama’s actions in Libya, which it got me thinking, of all things, about how I play video games.

The article is a profile of United States president Barack Obama, in which the author seeks to explain Obama's leadership style through an analysis of a few key moments in the first half of his presidency. Its main focus is on the very public decision for the United States to intervene militarily in Libya. However it intersperses this with another angle of the presidents approach toward tackling complex situations by discussing his strategy going into the weekly game of basketball he organises with other members of his government.
In the lead up to the article proper, the writer goes over Obama's explanation of how his style of play has had to change over the years as his abilities reflected his age. One paragraph in particular stuck in my mind:

“What happens is, as I get older, the chances I’m going to play well go down. When I was 30 there was, like, a one-in-two chance. By the time I was 40 it was more like one in three or one in four.” He used to focus on personal achievement, but as he can no longer achieve so much personally, he’s switched to trying to figure out how to make his team win. In his decline he’s maintaining his relevance and sense of purpose.

This line of thinking reminds me of how I play games like Halo or Battlefield. In particular why I like playing team oriented games, rather than the helter skelter frenzy of a free for all.
Let me explain.
Though I may not be that aged yet (It seems that as the average gamers age has increased each year, so has mine; so things work out nicely), I nevertheless do feel that there is an immense advantage for the youth when it comes to playing video games. First of all, they have more time to play. I remember fondly spending hours and hours with friends perfecting every possible circuit in games like Super Mario Kart, or stealthily stalking opponents on GoldenEye, to the point that tense stalemates ran into hours of rigging proximity mines, or sniping the sharp edged polygons of a crouched individual, trying their best to remain in the small shadow profile we had each mentally mapped.

We've come a long way baby

In addition to this extra training time, the younger gaming population is also able to capitalise on their apparent quicker reflexes, and as a result, an uncanny ability to hone their aim when compared to mine.
Now I have never been much of a long distance fighter as it is (give me a shotgun and melee any day), but I can still sense the disparity in aim, and thus accuracy, when a battle gets going.
So a while ago I decided that I would not let this asymmetry get me down. Whatever I may now lack in youthful spry, I can more than make up for in guile, strategy and determination.
I may not be able to stroll through a battlefield picking off my enemies with uncanny headshots as my opponents often do. However these days when I burst on stage I can assure you that, though I tend to go down in a hail of bullets, when my charge is complete and the dust has settled, the opposing team is well aware of it, and generally worse for wear because of it.

There is no I in team, and thus there should be no ego on the battlefield. More often than not I notice younger gamers tend to be glory hogs, they go for the highest score for themselves, regardless of the team's situation. They grab whatever weapon they desire, and assert that they are the best at whatever endeavour they are undertaking.

More often than not this comes to mind..

I pick team based games because I like the strategy. I like looking at what is happening in a game, and figuring out the best plan of attack to turn the tide in my teams favour. Perhaps someone needs suppressive fire, or maybe just a charge into the open to distract the other side. Either way these actions are rarely major points getterson their own, but add up these plays as an overall game plan, and you soon find yourself rising to the top of your teams leaderboard, and aiding the overall probability of a victory.

This is the kind of maneuvering that doesn't see as appealing from a single player point of view. But harrying one's opponents is just as important as taking them out, or capturing the flag.

They always say know your enemy, and what enemy truly hits home more than one’s own weaknesses? At the end of the day it is about knowing your own limitations, and accepting that though the playing field is not even, the bumps and troughs it provides can just as easily substitute for cover as they do for hindrance.

Coming full circle this whole thing reminds me of my own days playing basketball.
I remember the emphasis always on who got the baskets, especially as our coach’s son was the tallest, and thus the officially sanctioned team strategy was ‘throw it to Matt’
After games my mum would always compliment me on my movements on the court.
“You're always where you need to be”, she would say; “they just don’t pass it the way they should”.

These days at least I know where I need to be, and the initiative is on me to make the most of this position.

I’m Back

Oh my how it has been a busy past few weeks. Hell, a busy past month!

It has been far too long since I posted regularly on here, and for those few of you who enjoy reading my esoterically themed posts, I apologise. Indeed you can take my previous six-thousand word strong post as something of a compensation for this (I hope it wasn’t too long). But there has been a lot going on lately which explains this absence.

First, there was my favourite day of the year, St Patricks Day. Expect a post on this one soon or at least something outlining my maleficent love of Guinness, and my recent membership to the 100 pint club. Then there was my mates wedding, where I was one of the best men, and agonised over the prospect of doing a speech which apparently went down alright in the end, but about which I have little to no recollection of right now (not to mention the random singing of a Eurovision song as demanded by the father of the groom....). Then the Easter break came along, and a long weekend of caravan parking, and beer drinking, left me thoroughly off the radar on all accounts.

Oh and did I mention that in the midst of this I decided to take up a second job tutoring at university, have yet to figure out how this will work with my current full time job, and am still trying to convince my work that this will in some way offer positive benefits?

Anyhow, this is in part the reason for my absence, and I shall endeavour to rectify it as soon as possible. In the meantime, enjoy this random Hitchens quote and unrelated gif:

 “We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes - one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way” - Christopher Hitchens

Wednesdays Words 6 - Literary Taste and Personal Development

“Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

I like this quote, and unfortunately feel that it describes me to a great degree. I haven’t taken the time to properly develop myself as a person to the extent that I would like to have if my situation had been ideal (read: was a millionaire with time to spare). I don’t know all the things I would like to know, I haven’t read the books I know I should have read, and I don’t fully understand my own views about the world I live in. I feel like I am making do with a minimal set of the information I would like to have in order to be content with my own personal sphere of knowledge.

Case in point: this very quote itself. I know of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I don’t know much about him. He was a writer I believe, active around the twenties, but I couldn’t name a book he was responsible for, and I know that there was a Zelda involved, but that this has nothing to do with Link.

This Zelda though, I know quite well

I find that rather than knowing important things, I know of important things. It is like my previous post on how I just don’t get poetry, yet I still have a tacit acceptance that it must be a worthwhile thing to know.

Literary taste is likewise something I have failed to cultivate. Though I possess an extensive knowledge of book titles which I should have read, or which nonetheless have some sort of literary significance; I have yet to move very far along my list of ‘books I need to read’. Brideshead Revisted, Wuthering Heights, anything by Hemingway, anything by suitably long dead Russians; the list goes on.

I know of these books, but I haven’t the slightest idea why they are important, or what the overall gist of their respective stories are.

Is it just me, or has this title always sounded more like a B-grade horror sequel than a literary work?

But the way that the modern world can overtake you is evident all over the place. I love chess, but I don’t play chess much anymore; I haven’t cultivated that part of my life anywhere near as much as I would want. I play with my son occasionally, but in order to fully embrace the game, I would have to devote far too much time to it. Let’s face it, in these days where a half hour of chess playing could be replaced with a scroll through Facebook activities, a read of my Twitter feed, a glance at the latest blog entries via RSS, a few informative and hilarious videos on YouTube, insightful commentary from Al-Jazerra or any other activities on the web; the ancient Indian game all but certainly loses the bet.

Or perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone? 

On the other hand, if we are to look at Fitz’s quote from a more modern perspective we might be tempted to dismiss it, or at least diminish its accusations, as somewhat anachronistic.

After all while it is no doubt true that the majority of the population will not form a literary taste as such, these days literature is not the only medium with which people can form a personal philosophical viewpoint.

Nowadays we can devote our attention to the multitude of movies out there, and slowly cultivate a unique cinematic taste, which may very well help us to plumb the depths of the human condition as much as any literary viewpoint would. We can similarly turn our attention to the small screen, which these days exhibits works of such complexity and daring that it is hardly worthy of the scorn so often associated with devoting time to watching the box.

But if there is any one tool which has emerged out of the past century as the superlative force in cultivating our own personal beliefs, tastes and philosophical development, it has to be the Internet.

And it's useful for pictures of people lying face down in various situations......

Nothing else can compare to the net’s ability to pervade every instance of our personality. You can read books online, turn to articles about them, read a blog, or take part in a discussion with people from across the globe. But considering the medium I am using for this message, this should be of no doubt to anyone reading.

Perhaps this widening of the information sphere is the reason for my thoughts regarding my own apparent lack in refinement. As there is so much more available to us in this information age, and our attention spans have been stretched much further than ever before, we in a sense dilute our tastes over a variety of knowledge sources never before experienced by anyone at any point in history. In this sense, a short attention span isn’t the worst thing in the world, for while it may result in a less thorough approach to whatever is being analysed at the time, it nevertheless allows for rapid transitions from one source of attention, knowledge or amusement, to another.

I mean sure I may not have much of an understanding of the great Russian authors, or the popular British novelists of the past few hundred years, but thanks to the internet I know such obscure things as the amazing abilities of animal penises, the curious nature of infinite numbers that differ in size and how to make a trebuchet out of office supplies. And this is only a small subset of the much larger experiences I have garnered from the venerable World Wide Web.

So while Fitzgerald may have been lamenting modern mans aversion to literary and philosophical development and self determination, I think it is somewhat encouraging that today we have a lot more tools available to the everyday man to help them in their quest through life.
That's all for this late night rant dear reader. I hope this makes up for the missed Wednesdays Words last week; whats more I hope someone noticed it was missing.
Good night all.
MM

Oh and on a quick wiki, I see that F. Scott wrote The Great Gatsby. I haven't read it, but luckily come December this year I might not have to...

Wednesdays Words – Week 3

“The average, healthy, well adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible” – Jean Kerr

I am not a morning person. I like the morning only in the sense that I naturally stay up till around 2a.m. before that voice inside my head informs me that I should probably go to bed. But the thing is, the voice I hear isn’t my inner weariness trying to overrun the part of me that wants to stay awake. I am not tired at these times. No the voice is simply the part of me that knows I live in a world geared towards those who are morning people, and the fact that these are generally those in charge of the working world (of which I am begrudgingly a part).
The morning I like is dark, not light. It’s at the end of my waking day, not the start. It’s populated by weird shows and foreign SBS films, not beaming out those crappy ‘morning shows’ that seem to want to straddle the line between news, commercial, and brain numbing inanity (but more often than not they only succeed in the last criteria).
I remember years ago during my uni days I would ponder the different Mathews that formed the gestalt entity I identify as myself. There was Drunk Mathew, Uni Mathew, Study Mathew, Morning Mathew...... the list went on. Generally Drunk Mathew had the best time; he all but killed Morning Mathew for a few years, and was the bane of Uni Mathew, who often found himself late, unprepared, and feeling a bit too seedy for a day of lectures.
A point worth noticing however is that Morning Mathew is a reluctant addition to this whole menagerie, he is a social construct; a forced part of my psyche. If I were the true lord and master of my life, morning Mathew wouldn’t exist. He would reside in a limbo, only coming back into existence when some undue force awoke me from my slumber.
This is the reason why for this Wednesdays Words, I picked the above quote from Jean Kerr, a person who I know next to nothing about, save the fact she was a playwright, and lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Scranton, Pennsylvania; home of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company

I chose it because I feel terrible in the mornings. Not terrible in any physiological sense, I just don’t want to be up; don’t want to be conscious.
However these days I have a new variable in my mornings, one that adds a more ambiguous quality to my waking experience.
I have a family.
I have a wife and a son who are both a lot more comfortable in the a.m. than I am. So more often than not Morning Mathew will now be pulled into existence, even on the weekends, when his son enters the room, and coaxes him out of bed. My wife too is always eager for me to forsake my world of slumber for the promised delights of the waking world.
But it isn’t all bad. Sure Morning Mathew doesn’t like this, and his temper is generally a bit shorter than Laidback Mathew. But there is a new guy on the scene now; Family Mathew. Luckily for us Mathews as a whole, Family Mathew has wrought by far the most positive elements in my life, and he is here to stay.
So though I may find myself up hours ahead of when I would ideally like to be, it is finally for a good enough reason. I am up having a family breakfast, watching cartoons with my son, or eating out at a cafe with my wife. I am keen to get out and watch my son’s karate classes, or go for a roadtrip with the family to buy some antique tools or whatnot from some obscure country town. Or just to relax at home doing nothing, but doing it with good company (not to mention the days when my wife bribes me out of bed with pancakes and waffles, mmmmm).
These benefits are enough to outweigh the negatives of missing my extra hours of sleep, and placate me as a whole, so I can shut out Morning Mathews objections for the time being.

Well that’s my Wednesdays Words done, a tad off topic this week, but these quotes aren’t always the most inspirational, and as it is just meant to be a catalyst for more writing, I guess it has done its duty.
Until next time dear reader.
MM

My Thoughts on Religion as a Child Weren’t That Childish

I have been reading a lot of ‘Why I am an atheist’ posts from various people over at PZ Myers blog Pharyngula, and thought it would be interesting to tackle my own. However I found my explanation for why I am an atheist somewhat less interesting (I am an atheist, and always have been), and slowly my post turned into yet another rant. This one involved some of my early thoughts regarding religion when I was a child, and how my early version of atheism treated religion when it was thrust upon me.

I hope it is entertaining in some way for you dear reader, so please, enjoy:

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I have been an atheist for as long as I can remember. I am not one of those atheists who have a nice story of discovering their atheism, or conjunctly losing their religious faith. I can’t really explain how I became an atheist, only point out that at some point along the way, I realised that I was one.

I remember attending religious education classes in primary school, I don’t recall what age I was, or why I was in religious education at a public school at all (I assume my parents could have opted out, but chose not to for some reason); but I do remember the stark differences I noticed between real classes, and what was essentially story time, with unconvincing, and un-entertaining stories.

Like when Jesus cursed a tree. That's right; a tree. A worthy foe for the son of a god

The god stuff never gelled for me, and I remember sneakily voicing this fact to my fellow students in a hushed tone.

“I don’t think this god stuff is real” I would whisper.

Many of my mates didn’t either, but there didn’t really seem to be any room for questioning the truth of these classes; we just undertook them. Indoctrination after all is only really a one way process.

I do remember one of my early reasoned arguments as to why I didn’t think that the particular religion I was being exposed to at school was the ‘right one’. Being an avid reader and watcher of documentaries as a child, I was vaguely aware of the history of western civilisation’s conquest of other nations and peoples. I knew about Inca gold, and conquistadors; about Native American Indians, and Australian aboriginals.

Thus it seemed to me at an early age that there was a conspicuous lack of verification from any of these newly encountered peoples, regarding the ultimate nature of the universe. Each group appeared to have their own guesses, and Christianity only seemed to flow from country to country with the power and influence of its current believers (or at the tip of their divine sword).

"Behold; my rational arguments for believing in Jesus!"

What would have convinced me was the arrival of Cortez to an unknown land, but one replete with Christ worshipers (or at least a form of proto-Jew still waiting to hear of the messiah’s arrival). When civilisations meet, there are generally common facts that they will be able to confirm with one another.

Have you heard of Mars, the fire planet?Yes we have, but we call him something else, and believe it is a wandering beast.

Fair enough. Not really the same answer and perhaps a charge of blasphemy if someone was zealous enough; but nonetheless a general agreement on the physical facts. Mars is up there, looks a bit reddish, occasionally moves in retrograde motions et cetera. The notion of a god however, is never so similar.

Have you heard of Jesus of Nazareth, your eternal saviour?
No I have not. But if you sacrifice a young girl to Tezcatlipoca, I am sure he will enlighten us.

Sure people might like to point out that most, if not all, of these civilisations nevertheless had concepts of supernatural beings in common. However if you look at the nature of these disparate deities you will see they are far too different, and often outright contradictory, to be different interpretations of the same fact.

In order for a semblance of credibility to be attributed toward the Christian explanation for the universe, and mans place within it, there would need to be interpretations which though they may differ, at least bare more than a passing resemblance to one another.

But of course, this is never the case. Some religions have similar stories to others, but inevitably, they are always within walking distance, or perhaps hiking, trading or sailing distance from each other. We would expect the Egyptian mythology to have similar characters to Greek ones. I am not in the least surprised that the religion of the Carthaginian Empire bears a resemblance to the Phoenician one because if you chanced to look at it, I would bet their cultures also share similarities.

Pictured: Carthaginians. (And if you think that was a stretch to get Gladiator in there, then you forget you are dealing with a man who had his son named Harrison Maximus Gunn Morton)

However when you look at it rationally, there is an obvious excuse for this lack of knowledge being spread around the globe, namely that it isn’t true. The Christian on the other hand must explain why, for some reason, their almighty god decided that rather than appear in one of the more advanced civilisationsof the day, it was better to confine himself to a small portion of the Arabian Peninsula.

One might then seek to get away with this lack of independent Christians throughout the world, and explain it away by pointing out a Bible passage that commands Christians to do their best to spread the word (a task I might add that surely could have been better achieved if Christ had lived in China, or perhaps if the almighty god itself had helped out distributing his leaflets). In this sense the lack of confirmation from other lands is acceptable, as the almighty predicted this occurrence, and took account for it in the decree to prosthelytise.

Ignoring the fact that this seems quite an inefficient and demonstrably unsuccessful way of spreading ultimate truth, the avid apologist would still have to account for the fact that these isolated pockets of other religions seem to have wildly different origin stories than those prevalent in the middle east. The Hindu people believe that the earth was created by a cosmic egg being split, while the early Finns will tell you about how the world was created when a beautiful teal landed on the primordial waters and laid seven eggs, one of which would become the earth. It’s not like they are just a bit out; they are way out (though both are at least ova related).

However, don’t count out those persistent Christian apologists yet, because thousands of years of cultural evolution have made quite a slippery beast of their originally desert dwelling religion.

Ask a learned Christian about the question of different cultures and languages, and you will no doubt be presented with the Tower of Babel as the panacea for all rational thought on the subject.

For those not in the know, the tower of Babel is a Biblical story whereby man got quite cocky with himself, and decided to build a tower so high, that they could reach heaven. God, seeing that and being caught quite off guard, decided to thwart mans attempt to jump the queue (he is the arch-conservative after all), and scattered them upon the face of the earth. To add insult to injury God moved to hinder mankind further by confusing his language, remarking “Come, let us go down and confound their speech”.

Considering the modest height of it, God must be incensed at the Burj Khalifa

This is supposed to explain the profusion of differing languages across the globe, but is woefully inaccurate and childish when compared to the linguistic analysis we have about the development of humanlanguages. Not to mention the odd way that this god talks, which is either to himself, or some bizarre combination of first and third person narrative (he is after all three gods in one I suppose).

So here we have a story trying to explain the different languages and cultures across the earth. However it fails to really address the question, as though it would be true that two peoples unable to communicate will develop differently; it doesn’t then follow that they will drastically change their religious views accordingly. I find it hard to believe that the Mayans developed their rich mythology and religious practises from a primitive version of Christianity, or that the fortelling of Ragnarök has merely resulted from inexact interpretations of Christian eschatology.

This smacks of a form of linguistic elitism, whereby those who follow the Bible must assume that the only group of people who managed to ‘get it right’, were those who spoke their own favoured language.

Nor does this biblical explanation take into account mankind’s adroit ability to learn other languages! Surely two groups of people living nearby would not give up so quickly upon realising they speak a different language. It is this kind of fairytale explaining that not only fails to capture the truth of the world, but also sets up our kid’s minds for failure in the future, when real life explanations cannot be counted upon to be so childish.

Though I am still partial to invoking Thor as the explanation for thunder...

Now, whether the Christian believes this story as literal or as merely metaphorical is another matter.

But, I don’t want to turn this post into a rant too focused on these particular arguments against the Christian religion. Rather I just want to highlight the fact that this was an influential argument that I came up with all by myself whilst in primary school. It isn’t really that technical, nor was it planted in my head by any overwhelmingly atheist or secular influence; it’s just what I believed to be the rational outcome after learning about humanity’s history on this earth.

As time went by, and my atheistic roots grew ever deeper, I would amass a bevy of additional arguments against the religious myths and assertions thrown my way. But I always remembered this particular set of reasoning that allowed me to come up with my own theory of what they world would be like if these religious claims were true, and why the facts that I knew about the world negated this null hypothesis.

It was my first example of what is now a long tradition of atheism setting me free.

I can only hope that by arming my son with similar tools of the mind, he too will be able to see through the false claims of religions, and observe the fundamental inconsistencies within. The world may be a bit of a harsh reality to face at first, especially with these religions tailor making their ontology to be more attractive to susceptible human minds. But I think there is a much more satisfactory existence to be had in accepting the truth regardless of the outcome, because surely there is more virtue in such a thing, than there is in the alternative (i.e. comfort in untruth).

I am a firm believer in the art of quoting other people, if only because of the modest fact that pretty much anything I say can and has been said better by more qualified people before me. So as I am wont to do, I shall end this post with a couple of quotes from my arsenal.

“The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it” – George Santayana

“I cannot believe — and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable — that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth” - Bertrand Russell

Cheers.
MM

My Domesticated Palate

My wife, son and I recently attended a family dinner for my mother-in-laws birthday. The main event of the night was a lobster based meal, prepared in advance (drawn and quartered in a manner that would impress the English executioners of old) and to the fervent delights of many of the nights attendees.

Alas poor Lobsterheart, you suffer the same fate as William Wallace.

As my wife and I (and consequentially now our son) are ardent opponents of sea foods, we did not take part in the culinary ordeal.
It is quite a thing to watch from the outside as people who are accustomed to it commence taking apart a lobster. The viscera on display, the crunch of exoskeletons, the sucking of innards, the dead eyes of the creature on display and themselves under threat of being devoured; it is a scene more accustomed to narration by David Attenborough than to be witnessed at a dinner table.

Pictured: David Attenborough, not pictured: acceptable human food

We are evidently much more at ease leaving the face and general form of an animal on display so long as its place on the evolutionary tree is sufficiently to the left of us mammals.
My own dislike for any foods pulled unwillingly from the water can trace its genesis back to my mother, who is deathly allergic to any such foods. This is quite unfortunate for my dad, who loves most of what the sea has to offer, from fish and octopi, to squid and lobsters.
As such growing up in this household of opposing tastes was an interesting experience, where every once in a while my dad was either banished to the outdoors where he and my sister would have a seafood smorgasbord, or else my mother and I would be relegated to some other corner of the house, while the dining room was filled with various marine feasts.
And I don’t care what you say, seafood has quite an intrusive, and unpleasant odour. I don’t think my dislike of this smell can be pinned solely on my dislike for the food, as there is something slightly rotten about the smell in general; something all too easily associated with a particularly dirty beach.

Above: How seafood smells to me

But the main reason I bring this up dear reader is because I had an interesting epiphany about my eating habits as I sat at that table watching carapace being crushed with glee.
I only eat domesticated animals.
Bear in mind that I am not being inclusive of the whole set here; that is to say, I don’t eat all domesticated animals (though I do hear that dog is especially delicious). I just mean that all of the animals that I do eat appear to be of the domesticated variety. Cow, pig, sheep, chicken, turkey; these are all species forged by man from their wild ancestors.

Wild Turkey.... I prefer a nice scotch.

But if you look at the nature of seafood, and the creatures on the menu, you will seldom find anything that can be genuinely called domesticated.
What’s that you say? There are lobster farms. Well yes, you are correct (gold star), but animals can be farmed without being domesticated. Domestication involves artificial selection by humans that results in a genetic change of the population; so that the new animals are fundamentally different from those at the beginning. Animals can be farmed without this selection process influencing the population, and this is what is done with fish, lobsters et cetera.
I mentioned earlier the fact that seafood is generally displayed in a lot more confronting way that its terrestrial counterpart, with heads on display, superfluous body parts remaining unbutchered, and sometime the whole animal remaining on your plate. Now, one of the more obvious properties of an animal domesticated for food is the enlarging of these eatable areas, and the general ‘softening’ or the rest of the animal. Thus we can hack off steaks, and chicken fillets with ease, but perhaps a fish, or lobster are less advantaged by the fact that their physiological structure has not been altered by the thousands of years of animal husbandry that turned the beastly Auroch, into the manageably corpulent Friesian.

I busted out my MS Paint skills to give this comparison of the Auroch's size to that of a modern cow.

Evidently the barrier of water between us and our fishy prey is enough to hold off mans domesticating advances. Sure nowadays we do have fish farms, and a couple of domesticate fish varieties, but these things have a long way to go before they can match the variety and specialisation of our more celebrated domestications.

So I was very interested when I came to note this property of my eating habits. Previously I had maintained that I would only eat an animal that swam solely to escape the water; an animal which if thrown in the water, would not feel at home.
Now I have a slightly better basis to explain my eating habits; I don’t eat wild animals.
This is more likely than not a by-product of my aversion to eating meat at a philosophical level, but my inability to stop eating meat at a “it just tastes so damn good” level.
But what the hell, I am willing to take this explanation at face value, and deal with the further implications another day.

MM

My (Attempt At) Musical Development

Throughout my life I have found myself slowly progressing towards easier and easier musical instruments as my lack of talent becomes apparent, and defeats each attempt I make to coax out the musical genius that my fervent singing in the shower confirms must be in me.

It started off years ago with the guitar; borrowing my sister’s electric one after she stepped out of her punk girl phase and somehow stepped into the ‘country girl’ role she was in for a while. This was back in the late nineties, and I was in the punk rock stage of my musical life. The internet was already on its way to taking over our lives back then, and so each day at school I would browse the ‘World Wide Web’ using Altavista, and find myself pages and pages of guitar tabs to print off, and take home with me.

Vintage Internet.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a way to print off talent, or patience, and so it wasn’t long before the guitar took its place as an ornament in my room, slowly gathering dust.

The next stage I found myself in was one where I had accepted my lack of chordophonical skill, but had yet to give up the part-time dream of being able to rock out in a band. Thus I moved my attention toward the drums.

Having graduated from a high school student punk rock mentality, into a more mature university student classic rock attitude, I was now a diehard fan of Led Zeppelin, with Achilles Last Stand ranking among my favourite songs of all time (it remains at its perch on the top of my list to this day).

For those of you who don’t know the song, it has some absolutely amazing drumming from a Mr John Bonham, whose prowess with the sticks sadly could not stop him from asphyxiating on his own vomit. Naive though it may seem to base your choice of instrument on a song which contains very advanced examples of that instruments application, I nevertheless decided that perhaps drumming, with its simple ‘hit the thing with a stick’ premise, was my key to conquering the musicians title.

Simplicity

For a little while drumming actually seemed like something I could do. I was happy to learn that almost every basic drum beat in AC/DC’s catalogue was comprised of the same pattern, though perhaps different tempo’s (if you were lucky). So while one minute I was on the Highway to Hell, and the next I was accidently strolling off to do some Dirty Deeds; I nevertheless felt I was actually playing something, rather than just emitting various ill-timed noises.

Though I was far from competent, there was at least the tacit assumption that I was capable, if only lacking somewhat in practice. I was no Manny, but hopefully I wasn’t a Fran either.

Damn your talent Bill Bailey!

But as it turns out drumming is a bit of a commitment. You can’t whip out your drums at a party or on a lazy night, and simply strum out some tunes. Drums are not portable, and they are far from subtle. So while they aren’t mobile, drums are nevertheless in your face; you never miss the fact that someone is drumming near you, because they are actively hammering their presence into your auditory canal.

Look. At. Me. I. Am. Drumming.

As such drummers are usually relegated to the more remote corners of residential existence; to garages, sheds, or ‘back rooms’. Living with my parents at the time, it was the outdoor shed for me. So if I ever got the drumming bug, I had to brave the often frigid Ballarat weather, and sequester myself away to the confines of a shed for a few hours.

For a while I kept up practising; after all I had spent around $400 on the kit, which back then I measured as around fifteen slabs of beer (the standard university students measure I believe).

But this too soon fell prey to the combination of lack of talent, and lack of spare time. The drum kit stopped being an instrument, and started being an unwarranted occupier of space in my dads shed.
Since that last attempt I had been pretty busy, what with marriage, fatherhood, and moving out into the workforce; as such my dreams of discovering subterranean musical talent were put on the side burner (or onto the New Years resolution list, which is effectively the same thing).

But now, as I progress further from my mid twenty's and try not to stare at the big 30 sitting over the horizon, I have decided to again give music another go. Thus I now move on to my latest attempt at musical accomplishment: the harmonica.

My Suzuki harmonica, courtesy of Sovereign Hills Waterloo Store

I wasn’t the best at plucking strings; my attempts at banging membranes were likewise unsatisfying, so perhaps blowing air through something will prove to be my forte.

If i am not successful, at the rate I am going by 2015 I shall be playing the kazoo, and from then on I may just have to relegate myself to humming, or the gentle clapping of my hands.

Wish me luck.

MM

Dizziness of Freedom

I am somewhat scared of heights. I wouldn’t call myself acrophobic, in the sense that I am not paralysed by the experience of heights, and don’t suffer panic attacks or anything of the like. But I am uncomfortable with heights, and with the feelings I get from them.

There are obvious reasons why a fear of heights would be favoured by evolution; it doesn’t take much to see why an individual who shy’s away from cliffs may be more likely to survive than their friend who likes playing on the precipice. Likewise there can be obvious discomforts associated with heights, most common being a feeling of vertigo or loss of balance as the visual cues our brain uses to correct our motion move further into the distance, and thus afford us less accurate points of reference to work with.

However these examples are too biological to fully satisfy me with regard to my own reaction to heights. It is all well and good to say that these physiological things can compound into a fear of heights, or at least a discomfort with them; but us homo sapiens’ are one of the lucky species able to not only understand out evolutionary origins, but to also (in a sense) overcome them. There are other natural fears, such as a fear of spiders or darkness, which we can use our reason to overcome. Yet I still find myself experiencing a visceral response when I am elevated beyond the norm.

Plus this photo freaks my eyes out....

Though I may know that the handrail is secure, and that I won’t be falling; I still feel the primal pull towards something less than pleasant. I can be in a tall building, staring out a window in the complete knowledge that I am as safe as the thousands of people who use it every day; yet the pit of my stomach beckons. My mind can reason, but it is nevertheless still contained in a brain, and subject to its evolutionary idiosyncrasies.
I did however find another satisfying explanation a few years back when was reading about Kierkegaard. I came across his idea of the ‘dizziness of freedom’, whereby in some cases the fear of heights can be described not as a fear of the simple fact of being at a considerable height, but rather the second hand fear, or subconscious dread, associated with the fact that you could at any point choose to throw yourself off the edge. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom he said; the fact that you have the will within yourself to do these things brings up an unfocused fear inside merely because of this fact.

"I must find a truth that is true for me. And someone who can draw bodies" -  Kierkegaard

This to me was a more satisfactory explanation of my own feelings regarding heights. I am not afraid of height in itself, but rather of the possibility (and dare I say urge) to throw oneself over the edge.

I get the same feeling, that quiver at the base of my stomach, when I am a passenger in a car going at speed along a highway. The knowledge that just outside my door is a similar drop to a closer, but equally fatal, moving highway. Accessible with a simple exercising of my own free will; I could just as easily open the door and plunge to the asphalt, as I could defenestrate myself from a sky-scraper.
I don’t want to do these things, for the obvious fear of the consequences; but it is a possibility, and something seemingly only kept at bay by the very will which could bring about its execution.Though I guess as with a lot of explanations, this is just pushing the onus back a bit further. After all, then we have to wonder why the tacit acknowledgement of such possible manifestations of the will is something that our subconscious minds can fixate upon. After all I feel the unfocused fear of this action much more than I do any number of other possible, yet undesirable, actions that are in my arsenal. I don’t feel the dizziness of freedom when I am near a fire, though I know I could throw myself in, nor do I feel anxiety when I am in the presence of poisons, though I know I could imbibe them.

Though some poison I do indulge in

It must simply be the undeniable visual cues, the involuntary sense data that enters our minds via the optic nerve, and sets its subconscious processes working against us. After all to recognise that we are up high takes a lot less deliberative effort than it does to understand some of the other threats mentioned.
Also, at the end of the day, it is much easier on ones pride to shy away from heights based on a reasoned philosophical argument, than it is to just admit that you are scared of heights. So perhaps I will just stick to that for now.

  

Sidenote here: In Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre described vertigo as “anguish to the extent that I am afraid not of falling over the precipice, but of throwing myself over”, which seems to be similar to what we are talking about here. Except for the fact that vertigo and a fear of heights aren’t exactly the same thing. Vertigo is more a sense of spinning when one is remaining still. It is often associated with a fear of heights (not to mention classic movies (see above), or Arrested Development skits), but can be experienced at any time.

[Oh, and I couldn't find the vertigo clips from Arrested Development, so i settled with the best of Tobias.]



And with that I declare this random post complete.
MM

NaNoWriMo: Looking Back On My Experience

Well November is over, and as the moustaches fall and clean shaven faces are once more looked upon gratefully by family members and co-workers who put up with thirty days of dirty looking, unfashionably manscaped faces; I too have come to the end of a little journey of my own.

NaNoWriMo is over, and I have my novel. Though it isn’t finished exactly, I have shot past the required fifty thousand words and am happy to call myself a ‘winner’.

My novel, Fourth Rock, is something which I am pretty proud of. Having never really written anything beyond the required English pieces back in 2002, it was great to just get out there and let my imagination run riot. I have often toyed with the idea of writing in a more professional sense, but as I haven’t really had any proper exposure to it, it has forever remained a bit of a pipedream of mine.

NaNoWriMo however turned out to be just what I needed; in more ways than one.

It gave me motivation to actually get out there, start writing, and actually stick with it for once. Too often I have written a few thousand words of a tentative story, before I gave up at the hopelessness of it all, and abandoned the beginning moments of plots, burgeoning characters and promising dialogue. NaNoWriMo gave me a set time to do something; I had thirty days, and I had to write something. It was self imposed homework.

But along with the motivation of a concrete deadline, it also gave me a pretty good excuse. If my novel was crap, well what else were you to expect? After all I was seeking to write a novel in thirty days. Sure Agatha Christie may have been able to churn out bets selling novels in a month, but hey; I’m no writer, so cut me some slack. NaNoWriMo takes away some of the pressure by forcing you to just do it. You don’t have to spend ages crafting your masterpiece, and feel devastated when people critique it. Consequentially I can be happy with the fact that my novel is basically a cool story, with a hopefully interesting plot. There is no real character development, but what the hell; I can save that for a novel that I don’t have to write in thirty days, and that I can actually plan out in advance.

Apart from motivation (and an excuse for crapness), NaNoWriMo also gave me some sorely needed practise. The deadline was not only good at inspiring me, but it also makes you face up to things that generally you might want to leave aside for a while. I enjoy writing plot, and thinking of storylines, and character backgrounds; but I have never really stuck with anything long enough to have to worry about things like dialogue, or actually describing characters doing things.

It took me a few days to get used to the fact that as I was writing my story, I had to not only describe how conversations worked, but also what the characters were doing while this happened, and how to present this in a way that wasn’t terminally boring.

“Hello” John said

“Hello to you too” Ryleah said.

“How about this weather” Said John

“Yes, how about it” replied Ryleah.

It is a bit wooden if you don’t learn how to actually make it sound like the books you read. My problem in the beginning was to simply try and write dialogue as I would imagine a conversations transcript to be. No indications of who was saying it, or even in what context or tone they were saying it in. Is it a reply, was it a shout, or did they enquire? Were they saying this to anyone in particular, or in any direction? I had to think about all of this, and what’s more I had to do it over, and over again.

This repetitiveness is also useful in that you begin to notice your faults more so than you usually would when writing, as you are doing it in such a short time span. It was when I looked at a couple of paragraphs and noted that most of my sentences began with the same thing (‘He did this....,’ He did that...’), that I realised I needed to make sure that I wasn’t just describing things sentence after sentence, but rather that I was telling a story, which is more than just quotes and descriptions.

Basically I only really had experience writing broad strokes; now I had to paint in the details.

As you might also expect, NaNoWriMo sucks up a lot of your time; so much so that I neglected my blog for pretty much the whole of November. I remember when I was ten days into November, I tried to write a blog post about my experience thus far. I ended up abandoning the post upon realising that I had a cool idea of a way my main character could escape his latest predicament. So after I ditched my blog for a while, and spent the rest of the night details my detectives escape from an assassin in a dust storm, I decided it was best to just put aside blogging for the month, and keep all my writing focused in one area: my novel.

I did however write this much for the blog:

“It is getting to the point where I am really committed now. Characters are set, and plans are in motion that I don’t really have time to alter anymore. There were some things I wanted to include that I know I can’t really fit in now. Goodbye biologist love interest, and so long Martian prostitutes (I am glad to do away with these, so that I no longer have to have a couple of my mates insisting on the inclusion of a three breasted woman, ala Total Recall).”

[Note: Though looking back at this now I am somewhat happy to note that the biologist love interest did make it in to the novel, though I accidently ended up killing her off prematurely, so now she is just a flashback.]

Another great thing about NaNoWriMo is that it makes you feel ridiculously cool. When people ask you what you’ve been up to you can reply nonchalantly “Oh, this month I’m just writing a novel.”

One day I even applied for leave form work and spent half the day in Irish Murphy’s drinking pints of Guinness and typing away on my iPad. It felt great to be devoting my time to writing a novel, especially when my time was during work hours, and I was accruing leave loading. Though by the end of the sixth pint my writing was getting a bit sloppy.

It was interesting seeing how my story grew during NaNoWriMo. Much differently than it would have had I not been worried about the deadline looming at the end of the month that’s for sure.

I was reluctant to write some of the scenes I knew had to take place in my novel; the complex fight scenes, the scenes where my characters drew their motivation, or the introduction scenes for my main character. So I ended up not only delaying myself, but also the characters themselves, who would suddenly have so much to do, whereas beforehand they were sitting idly by.

Around a third of the way through I began to worry. I had decided all these cools things I wanted to happen, and yet I had left most of them unwritten. Instead I moved on with the happenings that caused them, and the consequences of them.

This is in part because I didn’t think I had the ability to write them, and also because I didn’t quite know enough details yet to make it work. I had scenes of my ‘hero’ getting recruited, but no actual cause or motivation given to him. I had him on the ‘case’, but never defined what the case was.

Another thing I had been shying away from was describing the characters looks. I am notoriously bad at describing people, or even noticing that people’s looks appearances have changed. I blame in part my mum, and my sisters; the latter of which are hairdressers (and thus change their hair styles more than I do my underwear), and the former is often their client. So after years of variable hairstyles I am now immune to noticing change. Consequentially, I am the last person you would want to identify a criminal (but possibly the first person you would want to commit a crime near).

I initially dealt with this the same way I was dealing with many things I was referencing, but hadn’t yet fleshed out; by the inclusion of gibberish. Check out the first sighting of my main character for instance:

“From behind the truck a #$#$##$##$# man strode into view. He was 34234234234234”

I didn’t have a description, I didn’t have a name. But I could tell you that he had a truck, brewed scotch on Mars, would have his ring and little fingers shot off, and any other number of irrelevant points of interest.

Indeed it wasn’t until the last five days that he finally got a last name at all. I had gone with John as his first name, because it is a very common sounding name, and that’s what I wanted (sorry Johns). You’re every day Martian dude. Yet I couldn’t find a last name that actually stuck with me. In the end it was my wife who provided the answer to the problem when she suggested the surname Murphy. It struck me as having that ‘feeling’ that I was searching for for my main character, don’t ask me why.

My main character now had a full name; John Murphy.

I ended up naming pretty much all my human characters after people I knew. The young policy advisor for the Martian Secretary was Leigh Gibbs, a portmanteau of two of my mates’ names. The Secretary was Carol Weybury, again a blend of two people who happen to sit near me at work. The assassin is Ryleah, my niece. The gadget man is Jesse, my nephew. I wanted a Chinese name so I picked Molly, the guide my parents use when they are in China (Molly is her name, and she is Chinese, therefore it is a Chinese name, ok?). I used the name Ha for the flashback biologist love interest, as that was the name of my lecturer in mathematics, and I didn’t want to populate my future vision of Mars with any anglocentric bias.

I was never under the impression that I would be writing in a linear, start to finish pattern when I started NaNoWriMo. Instead I had some interesting ideas that I wrote out, and was trying to tie together into one long narrative. What’s more I was surprised to find that after a few days it was actually working! Things were tying together. Formerly unrelated ideas suddenly made more sense if I connected them.

I often found myself running back in the story, and placing some foreshadowing to a future event, or perhaps a less obvious or explicit placement of a ‘Chekov’s gun’ style implement, which would serve its purpose later on. Or I would have my character in a bind, and then remember that I had handily placed an Impact Hammer in my story earlier, though that wasn’t even a real life tool (at least the kind I used).

It is a great feeling to all of a sudden realise that you can do something really cool in your story, especially when it is utilising some mundane element you had written in earlier. If you give your characters tools in their story, and furbish them with enough smarts, they are often able of finding their way out of situations you have created for them without any real solution in mind.

In the beginning I had grand plans for my novel, very grand plans. However as the writing went on, and I practised describing things, authoring conversations, and narrating inner monologues; I soon began to notice the word count expanding, while my opportunities for new characters, setting and chapters diminishing. I would spend pages describing a computer, or a rover, and forget that I had whole character to introduce, and plot points to uncover. Not to mention the whole story resolution thing I hear you are meant to put at the end of a novel.

Some of the people I had imagined as main characters were now no longer even in the story, whereas others who had been introduced merely to make way for a plot point or another characters introduction, were now so well introduced that they suddenly had their own back story!

As I mentioned earlier, there are no real character arcs in my story. They may find themselves thrown around the solar system, losing fingers, fighting for their lives, losing their freedoms, or making friends; but the characters themselves don’t really grow. Characters arc in a way that you want them to; this story was written on the fly. Sometimes I didn’t even know how a character was going to get out of their bind until I had written up to that point.

So now I find myself now, sitting at home with my sixty-five thousand plus novel at approximately 80% completion, with a bit less motivation, and somewhat more fatigue on the writer’s front. This is why it has taken me a while to get back into blogging.

I need to churn out the last few chapters and fillers as quick as I can, and edit it as roughly as I can. It may be tempting now that the deadline is gone (and I am a winner!) to give into my slovenly nature, and slowly pull the pieces together, however I can see one big problem with this: I lose my best excuse!

I can no longer proudly point out my own attempt at novel writing, and then cover my bases with critics by standing behind the excise of having written it in 30 days. If I spend too long editing and writing, then I will have put in too much effort for it to suck legitimately. Then it would just plain suck

So the way I look at it is a bit of a technicality. Yes the NaNoWriMo rules let you win whilst only having written the first fifty thousand words of your novel. It is after all a motivational tool at its heart.

However if I look back at my NaNoWriMo log I note that I had roughly seven days of no writing at all. These were generally weekends. So I am using these surplus days as my ‘fill the gaps’ days, so that I can spread them out over the next week, and finish off my first attempt at a novel.

In closing, I must say I would definitely recommend NaNoWriMo for anyone who likes the idea of writing a story, or even those who don’t. It’s a great way to start up your writing bug, and also learn a little bit about yourself in the process. It’s also a fantastic way of reminding yourself of your own potential.

It’s like Angus Kidman from Lifehacker pointed out after taking part in NaNoWriMo for the second time; if I have managed to write a gods damned novel in one month, then what’s my excuse for being so unproductive in the other 11 months?

So with that over, and with my semi-triumphant return to blogging, I bid you adieu, and look forward to being able to apply myself back to this blog, and hopefully with a slightly improved writing ability.

[Note: This blog post in itself is over 2,700 words, so if anything I have at least learnt to enhance my quantity of writing, if not my quality.]