Cycles

Now that cellphones, and most especially smartphones, have become so common that they seem like a clumsy, halfhearted Borg assimilation plot, the full force of their resulting cultural shift is beginning to crash on the shores of the general public.

The marker that everyone points to is the generation of children, now old enough to understand the mechanisms that drive their world, who cannot grasp how a society might function without each person having constant access to worldwide communication. In time, however, I think you'll find that the more difficult concept to explain is this: there was a time, kids, when purchasing a new phone wasn't a gigantic ordeal.

Three major operating systems, several carriers, and hundreds of phones that range in price from zero dollars on-contract to "we priced it this much so that you'd never think of buying a phone not-on-contract" dollars. And the whole ecosystem is underlined by the (when you stop to think about it) super weird contract phenomenon itself: something like getting to purchase a car for 1/3 the price if you agree to only buy gas from one company for two years.*

So not only is the decision itself difficult, but there's a real sense that you'd better not screw it up-because otherwise you'll spend those two years kicking yourself and watching the great upgrade clock count down once again. Someday we'll mark time by our phone contracts, noting our distance from a big life event by what device we remember checking facebook on while it was happening.

*Don't tell anyone I said that, it might become real.

Investments

I should really (read: I probably will never) create a list of the most important things I've read. Not the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, or anything "important" in a grand way, but the things that have stuck with me personally, popping up in my thoughts again and again, perhaps having a lasting impression on the way I think.

A surprising number of these writings will probably be about video games. Like this one!

In case you don't feel like investigating the whole thing, here's the short version. Among gamers, there's a subset that are enthusiasts for flight sims: highly accurate simulations of actual aircraft. And within that community, there's another subset that simulate air traffic controllers, using headsets to keep virtual pilots from crashing into one another. I should also mention that the air traffic software isn't a commercial product, but a fan-developed free add-on.

If the idea of people simulating another person's in-no-way-glamorous job in their leisure time sounds crazy*, then allow me to correct you: it actually isn't. It only sounds crazy because it's probably not you, or anyone you know. It is a sliver of a sliver of a chunk of society, but it's there. And that's why the post has stuck with me, it's a great example of how very broad the range of human experience is.

*I could never do this without insisting on using the crazy phonetic alphabet from the Hot Shots movies.

I don't know what you just said

For some reason, I've been thinking about Batman a lot lately.

Despite Christopher Nolan's best efforts to bring that universe into something resembling reality, there's no doubt that the villains are pretty ridiculous. However, as with Tolkien's Mt. Doom, those characters are now so well known that no one seems to notice how fairly stupid they are. I'll let you mentally run through the roster on your own, but here's a preview: one of them is a PENGUIN MAN.*

That being said, Batman's little circus of evil weirdos has taught me a lot about what makes a good villain. In terms of storytelling, the purpose of an enemy is to reveal the hero-to challenge the champion in interesting ways, force him to make interesting choices. The way you equip a good enemy to do that is by making him a foil for some virtue of the hero.

Riddler - Intellectual foil
Catwoman - Physical/Stealthy foil
Mr. Freeze - Technological foil
Scarecrow - Foil for Batman's use of fear
Joker - Foil for Batman's will, his capacity for taking actions that other people don't.

These enemies all do something that Batman does, but usually better, and that keeps Batman's abilities from seeming unstoppable, while also forcing him to use the rest of his arsenal in new ways.

*And another one is a ventriloquist. Yeah.

Pop Rally

Does it seem weird to anyone else that marching bands commonly play "Paint It Black" at sporting events? Isn't that song, which seems to be about consuming depression following the death of a lover, at an odd juxtaposition with "The Hey Song"*?

"I look inside myself and see my heart is black"

Ummmm, Go Team?!

"No colors anymore I want them to turn black"

Woo, Touchdown!

I guess you could argue the same about "The Imperial March" (aka, Darth Vader's theme), but that at least has an ominous, threatening vibe you might want to instill in your opponent. "Paint It Black" isn't threatening, though,  so unless your goal is to really bum the other side out I don't get it. Seems like when you're trying to rally a crowd, a song commonly used as the backdrop to Vietnam War movies shouldn't be your first choice.

*Fun fact: Some part of your mind is always listening to "The Hey Song," over and over.

Circular Arguments

I know you like candles. I like candles too. For their time they were a very effective technology that served us well. And I know that the prospect of light bulbs seems scary to you, and you don't trust new-fangled, high-tech solutions to problems you thought were already solved.

But just listen to me for a second.

I've been following this light bulb thing for a while, and using them for some time. So I'm in a good position to say that there's something to it all. And sooner or later, you're going to have to accept that they are better. And no matter how many light-bulb drawbacks you produce or how many arguments you make for the superiority of candles, it won't make a bit of difference.

I'm not saying your candles are going away completely, mind you. They certainly won't be our first choice for lighting needs, but they'll retain a certain place in our society. But if you really were to follow through on what you're saying now-that you'll never use light bulbs and only stick to candles-you're going to look like a crazy person in the long run. And that'll be appropriate, because you will be a crazy person.

Think of it this way. Used to we transported goods with wagons and horses. Then someone came up with railroads. And I'm sure that there was a certain amount of resistance to that too, from people who pointed out the expense of laying all that rail, how they didn't need to ship that fast, how cold and unromantic the rail cars were compared to a good, old fashioned wagon. But looking back, all that seems silly now. And it's clear that those detractors were fueled almost entirely by a fear of change.

So horde your candles if you want.* I'll won't even laugh when you grumpily accept the future, and enjoy it.

*Actually that's a good idea. Once they become a quaint anachronism the price will skyrocket, so long as you can make them smell like baked goods.

Class Struggle

When you play games that let you choose your class (knight, thief, wizard, etc.), it ends up being a sort of personality test. Melee characters tend to be the more aggressive, sports loving types. Clever people who enjoy a more technical role go the wizarding route. Those with a strong protective instinct often role Healer classes. 

It's not that cut-and-dry, mind you, human being simply don't sort that cleanly.* But there's definitely something revealing about it. The problem for a serious gamer is that, over time, you eventually get tired of the kind of class you usually play, and start to branch out.

At least, I think that's all it is. 

But it could also be a signal of personality change. As life forces you into new roles, perhaps your self shifts a bit, and your class choice moves accordingly. If that sounds like an interesting idea, let me assure you that it isn't. It's terrifying. What if I wake up one day, and all I want to do is swing a sword at a guy? What if I don't want to sit back inflicting status ailments with my bow, or cast a buff on my teammates? *shudder*

*Except thieves and rogues. They are always troublemakers.

Demolition

Water is really a very precious resource. Especially clean, fresh water for drinking. It's an essential component of all life that we know of, and the areas where it chooses to flow have etched out the mapping of our existence on this planet.

The idea of a machine that seems to produce drinkable water infinitely, at no cost to the drinker, is amazing. It's a miracle. A device like that would, outside of our modern technological feats, be a thing of incredible value. We should all be in awe that it exists.

So why, cat, do you insist on destroying it?

Why does this flowing river of life so offend you? Why can't you just get up, take your morning drink, then sit back and think, "Holy crap, that's awesome"? Why do you insist instead on pushing the fountain around so the water sloshes out*, then pawing at the little dome of clear, delicious water until it's set at some useless angle? What about being so well provided for angers you so much?

How about a little gratitude?

*Plus you hate getting wet, why would you want water spilling out all over the place?

Strapped

The reality is that Velcro makes a lot of sense.

As a kid, Velcro shoes were a revelation. No more hassles of tying laces, then having to stop everything you're doing to tie them again. And for people like me, who prefer their shoes pretty snug, Velcro provided a highly adjustable fit that didn't get annoyingly looser as the day wore on. It was, in all ways, superior to the rather clumsy method of interweaving a thin piece of cord through tiny, pre-made holes and knotting them together at the end.

But once you become an adult, you can't wear Velcro anymore, not unless you're very old, or in some way physically or mentally challenged, or that weird guy who wears Velcro shoes all the time. And why? No one knows. It's that way because it's that way. It's as though our society required a daily dexterity test, and if you can't pass it, that fact needs to be constantly advertised on your feet.

Except for sandals. There Velcro is okay, even though sandals have always used straps and buckles and lots of other perfectly good non-lace mechanisms. Let's toss those out and use Velcro. But on anything else, unacceptable.*

*Go to an athletic shoe store. Look at what's on the shelf. Is Velcro going to make them really look that much stupider?

Phoenix Downs and Phantom Trains

Video games have changed over the years, and if you're not a regular follower of the medium you may have missed the subtle shifts at work. Let me explain it to you.

Modern video games: "Hey what's up! Okay, here's how the controller works, here's what this button does, now this one, now those two together. Did you die? It's okay, I saved for you when you entered the room!"

Old video games: Go **** yourself.

You notice the difference when a more casual gamer (aka, normal person) attempts to play  . . . say Chrono Trigger, or Final Fantasy VII. You hear a lot of "So I have to do all that again?" and "How was I supposed to know that?"

And the answer is that, yes, you have to do all that again. And you were supposed to know that because the designers just assumed you were familiar with the mechanics of this genre—or that you'd get desperate enough to look through the manual*, which was a larger part of the experience in those days.

The problem for those of us who've been playing for a while is that we don't fully trust the modern design. We've been trained to hunt for that next save point (see kids, before there was autosaving you only got to save your game at certain points. If a boss battle left your party a wreck, you healed up afterwards, immediately. Otherwise, you might get randomly attacked in the 5 steps to the save point, die, and tear your controller in half.**) and now the idea of turning off the system without selecting a save slot is like trusting a random person to deposit your paycheck.

*And sometimes you'd rent a game, and in that section at the back for "notes" that no one used some guy would have copied down every level skip code. And you knew that, wherever that guy was, he was awesome.

**That was FF7, by the way, and the boss was Alexander.

History Lesson

Far be it from me to grumble about "these kids today," or their lack of understanding about . . . whatever. I don't think those kinds of criticisms are worth much, other than to highlight the speaker's level of irrelevance. 

But it's come to my attention that there's an entire generation who doesn't know about WinAmp.*

Before there was an iTunes to complain about, there was exactly one music player that anyone cared about, and it was called WinAmp. It was a light, versatile piece of software that simply did what it was supposed to.

Like the honey badger, WinAmp does not give a ****. Winamp does not manage your collection of music, scan your hard drive for music, or do anything else with your music-unless you tell it to. You can run multiple instances of WinAmp at the same time. You can play different songs on those instances all at once. I mean I don't know why you'd want to, but WinAmp doesn't make the assumption that you wouldn't. 

And it's still there. Even though it's been largely forgotten, WinAmp is still around. Try it. You might just find that there's comfort in a tool you can mold, rather than one that molds you.

*Also, Apple did not invent the mp3 player, or even the hard drive based mp3 player. I was using one of these when you were putting a cushion under your CD player.