December 2002
Merry Christmas to everyone! I have to say Merry Christmas because
anything else would be seen as Political CorrectnessTM
and political pandering, even though I'm not a politician. Maybe it
would be pandering since my family celebrates only Christmas, and for us
it has always been more of a gift-giving tradition than any kind of religious
celebration. But really, it seems like if you celebrate anything other
than Christmas, you're branded as "politically correct" and thus uncool,
and you're no longer Keeping it RealTM
and so on and so forth. Never mind me, I'm just babbling on and on.
I guess the source of what motivates me to babble so is seeing the
same things over and over in political discussions on message boards. It
seems "You're just being politically correct" is the new "You're a fascist."
There's a rule called Godwin's Law that says as a discussion goes on,
the probability of someone comparing their opponents to Nazis increases,
and when that happens, the argument is over and the person who made the comparison
loses. Well, I think there should be another law that says the probability
of someone calling someone else politically correct increases as well, and
the first person to say that ends the argument and loses it. Negative
bonus points should go to people who call their opponents PC and also call
them Nazis in the same message. Now, the thing about accusations of
political correctness is that it's much easier to "bait" people into losing
the argument by calling you PC without compromising your own argument. One
good method is to search all your opponent's messages for anything that could
be construed as an insult against a minority group and call them on it. Once
you do that, there's a good chance they'll accuse you of political correctness,
and you'll win the argument by default. Of course, once people catch
on to what you're doing, then instead of accusing you of being PC, they
might accuse you of PC-accusation-baiting. Once that happens, you
can just say that accusations of PC-accusation-baiting also fall under the
category of things that make you lose the argument.
I got some new games for Christmas. For the Playstation 2, I got
Kingdom Hearts, Jak and Daxter, and Ratchet and Clank. Needless to say,
I've been getting the control systems on those games confused. Sometimes
I try to throw Sora's sword by crouching and pressing the attack button,
even though I can't even crouch in that game, and sometimes I'll try to make
Jak use a potion from his inventory when he has taken a lot of damage, and
there are times when I see a machine that Ratchet can't use yet so I try
to find a source of blue eco so he can activate it. For the computer,
I got Neverwinter Nights, American McGee's Alice, Planescape: Torment, and
Soulbringer. I haven't played Soulbringer yet, but I've started Planescape:
Torment and it's a really strange and grim world but the story is compelling.
Who is the Nameless One, really? I'll have to find out. Alice
is a decent action game, but it's really kind of linear and, to be honest,
it's no match for any of the PS2 third-person action games I got. Why
can't there be just one game like Ratchet and Clank for the PC? Drakan
is sort of like it because of all the different items you can use, but it
still doesn't have as many varieties of ways to get past obstacles. Deus
Ex has lots of ways to get through places, but it's a completely different
style of game. For the Game Boy Advance, I got Castlevania: Harmony
of Dissonance, and later on I got Metroid Fusion. Castlevania is a
fun game, and it actually has items you can find in the castle instead of
having to get them by defeating the same enemy over and over again 50 times
like you had to do in Circle of the Moon. There's also money you can
find in the castle and a merchant, so in that way it's more like Symphony
of the Night. Metroid Fusion is a good game too. It has all the
secret passages and hidden items of previous Metroid games, but it's actually
a lot more linear and plot-driven, and you can't always go back to old areas
after a passageway has been destroyed or a door has been locked. There
are lots of bosses to defeat, and some of them are really hard. Some
of them, like the Nightmare creature, are still tough to beat even when you
know their attack pattern because their attacks are hard to avoid. I'd
say my favorite game out of the bunch would be either Kingdom Hearts or Ratchet
and Clank. I've been playing Ratchet and Clank a lot lately, trying
to get all the skill points and get the gold weapons.