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MetaPausing: The Fundamental Issue. July 27, 2007

Posted by adrenjarvi in religion.
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[MetaPausing is a soon-to-be-repeated blurb about the world around me, not exactly related to gaming, but rather, world issues and things like that. Not that my usual content is necessarily right on track.... but regardless.]

I can recall being a tenth-grade child, perhaps fifteen, going through the chore of confirmation classes. My mother was one of the teachers, and also the leader of the church choir. Being a fairly good catholic boy, I went to every one. Normally, despite my yearning for guilt on a Saturday night, they where all boring. This one was not all that different, but at least they changed the pace; they brought in one of the heavy hitters, one of the higher priests, whose official title ( and likely fancy hat) has been lost to me. He was not a loud man, being quite old, and refused to use the microphone. That pretty much was it for me…. once my imagination learned this, I began to imagine all the odd situations for why this man may not want to use it. My head drifted around, thinking about things ranging from Mic Failure to some sort of Holy Decree, shouting that the word of god shall not come from cheap speakers.

Then, I heard the old man-o-the-cloth speak the following:

“You could then say that we all have a responsibility to due our part to bring about the apocalypse.”

Needless to say, I no longer cared about the microphone. He continued:

“Christ died for your sins, and we know, as Catholics, that he will come again. And it is our job to help bring about this second coming,” the man smiled in a way that might put the Joker to shame, ” in any way we can.”

The speech continued, my brain no longer in a daze, but now a mind-numbing buzz.

After class let out, I was standing outside with the others, waiting for their ride. The boys I was associated with sure enough had taken this in a different way than I had; Imagined Tank rides through downtown, an entire network of shit-filled-flaming bags scouring this earth. My mind was still reluctantly dead.

When I was able to form a sentence, all I could think was how irresponsible something like that is to say, especially to a young mind. Still being fairly innocent, I would later learn words like Fundamentalism, Terrorist, and both left and right “Wings.” But that phrasing stuck with me, like a stray bullet the doc’s can’t safely remove. I had stopped doting on it after roughly two days, but it stayed in the back of my mind. I had grown, my belief in catholicism waned, I moved towards deism as opposed to outright atheism. But the memory was backlogged, cataloged, and other forms of “logged”, gone from my immediate conscious.

And then; I read this.

They are crafting, or trying to craft, public policy on religious rhetoric. I know this is nowhere close to being a new stratedgy- but this isn’t like gay marriage, or abortion. These people are discussing the end-times. The part of the bible that is written, more or less, by “Anonymous.” You can argue The rights of women, or homosexuals, or immigration. But how does one argue taking action against the end-of-times? Bush, or other conservatives, can attempt to block gay marriage via constitutional ban. But in five years, or two months, or a century- it can be overturned, overruled, logic winning against superstition. But one would think that someone who is attempting, quite literally, to “do his part to bring about armageddon”, would pull out all the stops. In fact, I would even posit that one who tries to end the world probably will, second coming or not. That is horrifying.

It reminds me, as many things do, of a comedians’ joke. The Comedian is referencing the phrase “live every day like it is your last”, to which he comments that they never tell you what to do the day after you lived like it was your last day. Imagine a future where people like this get their way, bombs fly and the world is charred. Then Imagine the next day, where there is no son-of-god walking the earth, no converted Jews; no Beasts, no new earth.

I’m not sure, at that point, that a “my bad” would suffice.

-F9

[yes... I am both trying out new sign-offs and new formats to discuss.]

Scientists make poor party guests- also, Apple. July 2, 2007

Posted by adrenjarvi in Apple.
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So there I was, on the interwebs, when I come across this article. Apparently, this is some sort of press release telling the world that “This new machine we have will totally not destroy the world, man.” This is equivalent to your buddy, half-drunk, approaching you with the phrase “Hey, you didn’t want your car, did you?”

You, the invested observer, respond; “Well, Did you do something to my car?”

The hopeful liar pauses, before finally saying, “No.” Lets all toast our impending doom.

In other world-might-be-ending-soon news, I am considering obtaining an apple product- a laptop of some sort, to be precise. Many people will be quick to shout hypocrite, because they know my disdain for the company. But my new train of thought was spurred on by a work announcement and some inner meditation.

At work, we were told that we would be starting “hero jobs” on Mac computers – i.e., we would begin fixing them. Now, my first (snarky) remark was “but don’t they ‘just work’?” but I was immediately stymied by the logic behind us fixing it; people who use macs don’t have it break often, so when it does break, they do not know what to do and will, more or less, freak out ( reinforcing my point; It’s a My First Computer). However, this began to make me think, and I really dissected what I do not like about apple into two things;

1. The iPod, and;
2. People who use Macs.

With 1, I simply believe it to be a bland platform that has established a brand and is resting on it’s laurels. It needs some sort of Innovative Competitor to get it off of it’s ass and start getting better, or it will be overtaken.
As for 2, of course I do not mean all Mac users- I mean only “those” mac users. You know…. the ones who use snarkiness to imply that anyone who uses an “inferior” operating system is three hairs away from an ape. I invision them at one giant starbucks inside of a mac store, sitting on oblong chairs and discussing movies that they will never make. These people I hate with a passion; In fact, one could say that I identify them more outwardly then I do by Mac usage.

What really hit me more than anything was the fact that I realized I know very little about the ins and outs of such a machine. There is a world of information that I need to conquer; an entire sphere of thought that lies at my feet, untouched by my hands. I feel the need to conquer a new interface, and so I choose this, my latests rival-come-friend.

But I am going to Boot camp the living hell out of it.

-AFK