Pwn Thugs in Harmony

Despite being an avid gamer myself, I find that certain aspects of the First-Person Shooter culture (e.g. Halo, Call of Duty, etc.) violently clash with my own sensibilities, like its wanton rampage on the English sentence. Still, curiosity overcame me this summer; I tried my hand at the multiplayer mode on one of the PS3's two or three good games, Resistance: Fall of Man.

Resistance has earned recent notoriety because The Church of England has actually demanded it be pulled off retail shelves. It cites one of the levels, in which you are to blast alien uglies in a realistic representation of Manchester Cathedral, as a "desecration of the Church" without Sony seeking any permission to portray the building in such a way.

(I should point out that the game carries additional insensitivities toward English culture, like referring to London's underground transit system as "The Subway").

Floored by Resistance's one-player mode, blasphemy or no, I thought I'd volunteer myself as a moving target for its thousands of practiced online warriors. I'll admit that there was something intimidating about the leap into such an ultra-competitive community. I mean, these are people who not only play video games, but who also struggle to prove something by them. I was inclined to do some homework, first.

Every online game has its own unwritten honor code, and to familiarize myself thus, I perused the enlightened discourses of Resistance's forums. It was all so I would not be recognized as a "rocket whore" or "tagtard", which, believe me, would not have been the first time.

In an FPS, you can never underestimate the importance of a cool profile name. Mine is Macdeth ("You Were Killed by Macdeth!" or, "You Killed Macdeth!") but to better fit in with the typical Resistance gamer, I'm considering a change to either Posthaste Killah or pimpNcircumstanz.

My experience so far is pretty superficial, especially since I'm not playing a mic headset to chat on, and therefore I'm deprived of communication with fellow players. That doesn't bother me. For the same reason it doesn't bother me that I can't hear other drivers on the highway. And even then, a great deal of those people are at least old enough to drive.

Like most good online shooters, Resistance has a Matchmaking function, which is to say that it makes some proclaimed effort of grouping you with competitors of equal skill. Let me just say that early on, its accuracy left much to be desired. It was a trifle disconcerting to be the lone "Private" competing against 35 "Four-Star Generals" and "Supreme Commanders" It was akin to hazing, but I was beginning to see the fun of this, especially should I figure out where the hell the grenades are on the maps.

Which helped. I started playing about five or six matches a night, eventually ranking in the middle of the pack or slightly higher each time. The other night I finally won a free-for-all of 11, and I punched the air like Tiger Woods winning his first Masters. It was time to re-evaluate. I had just referred to the bottom finishers as n00bs, and it was time to rethink this new obsession.

Experimentation

I'm not sure if I like having the music over there.

It isn't playing yet, unless you felt the urge. If you never do, no worries. I just used a site called Playlist Project, which has a decent search engine for songs and a hedonistic capacity of 75 songs per playlist. I'm sure there's better, but I wouldn't know, being a bit html-retarded and proud enough to be able to implement any music on my own to begin with.

I could have been much more shameless with the music, and you know it. Notice I didn't set the playlist to "Auto Start", and then hide the coveted Pause Button at the very bottom of the page, forcing visitors to slog through a cacophony of embedded YouTube videos while being sonically flagellated by T-Pain's "Buy U a Drank." That option's still on the table, though; we'll see who really wants to read my stuff.

Dicking with the playlist, I was visited by a familiar feeling, one I had in high school, when I would roll down the windows of my Cavalier and "share" my music with the community through 10" subs. I don't know whether I believed myself to be educating bystanders with the fine art of Chemical Brothers, or perhaps seeking to inspire admiration among like-minded musicphiles.

But one thing is for certain. It wasn't just so I could hear my music.

Whether people will admit it or not, posting music on personal web pages tends to be an exercise in self-indulgence. I realized this just after embedding the songs, and now I'm uncomfortably aware of their impracticality.

Honestly, why wouldn't you be listening to your own tunes as you read this? That's what you would ideally hear, right? Or do you actually seek to be "educated" with new music from somebody's page? Because there are really only two realistic uses of this whole profile soundtrack practice: if not to just to say "I dig this music and I think it goes well with this page," we also make the statement, "you need to hear this shit, bitches."

I think if any of my tracks over there gets both jobs done, it's Richard Cheese.

"I'm Feeling Derisive"

One of my favorite online pastimes is Blogger's "Next Blog" button. Try getting lost in its tunnelwork of endless possibilities, if you haven't already (but not now -- read what I have to say, first). I have a special appreciation for the thing because I don't know how else most people can happen upon my own blog. For me, the Next Blog button has proven such an addictive diversion, in fact, that I've invented a game for it.

Pretty simple, really. As you click away at the button, see how long it takes you to discover at least one blog of each category:

-The Conspiracy Theorist blog

-The Born-again Christian Gotta-Spread-The-Word blog

-Porn

-The Lonely American Travel blog

-The 14-year-old Girl "I dont giv a fuck" blog

-The Mommy blog

-The Break-up blog

-The Look At This Funny Shit on YouTube Compilation blog

You may race against a friend, perhaps emailing noteworthy links to each other in the process. And by no means is the above list inflexible: add your own categories if you like, or shorten the list for a lightning round.

Hints and Tips:

1. You should enjoy an advantage with the Next Blog button if you are proficient in an Asian language or Portuguese.

2. Appearances can be deceiving, so don't get careless. Just because a blog is entitled "Truth Lives" doesn't mean it isn't a blog solely devoted to defending Clay Aiken. Because one time (I swear to God) it was.

3. The Next Blog function appears to draw from a set group of blogs within a period of time, so don't be dismayed if you encounter the same blog twice or more. Keep soldiering on.

Happy Hunting!

"The Secret" Spillover

I'm not going to obsess over The Secret.

Not that I have better things to do -- it's night-time in Colorado Springs, so I don't. However, a stunning piece of work such as this cannot be done justice in one post, so I thought I'd highlight some choice... epigrams... from the self-help sensation that I failed to incorporate the other day:

(all are as contributed by its "teachers" on the audiobook)

Bob Proctor: "Most people have a goal of getting out of debt. That'll keep you in debt forever" (Disc 3, Track 4).

Rhonda Byrne: "The game I created to shift my feelings about my pile of bills, was to pretend the bills were actually checks. I would jump for joy as I would open up the mail and say 'More money for me! Thank you! Thank you!'" (Disc 3, Track 5)

David Schirmer: "So I got a bank statement. I whited out the total, and I put a new total in there. I put exactly what I wanted to see in the bank" (Disc 3, Track 5).

Rhonda Byrne: "The first thing to know is that if you focus on losing weight, you will attract back having to lose more weight. So get having to lose weight out of your mind. It's the very reason why diets don't work. Because you are focused on losing weight, you must attract back continually having to lose weight..."

"... If someone is overweight, it came from thinking 'fat' thoughts." (Disc 2, Track 8)

Bob Proctor: "If you have a disease, and you're focusing on it, and you're talking to people about it, you're going to create more disease cells" (Disc 3, Track 18).

Dr. John DeMartini: "Our physiology creates disease to give us feedback to let us know we have an imbalanced perspective and we're not loving, and we're not grateful" (Disc 3, Track 16).

"The Secret": Oh, Happy Day!

My mother, a long-time follower of The Oprah, has recently purchased one of Her talismans of bestowed preference: The Secret.

The Secret is a self-help documentary from Australian producers that features an assembly of modern-day "teachers" to communicate what "Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Hugo, Beethoven, Lincoln, Emerson, Edison, Einstein" (Disc 1, Track 1) all knew about success. They all knew The Secret, don't you know?

My mom bought The Secret on DVD and CD set and passed it on to loved ones, including me. She suggested I start with the CD's since the DVD is "pretty hokey", and I have thereby received Rhonda Byrne and Co.'s cosmic knowledge.

THE SECRET DISCOVERED

The foundation of The Secret (as I am magnanimous to share with you for free) is its touted "Law of Attraction." That is, if you preoccupy your mind with what you actually desire, those goals and achievements -- no matter how seemingly impossible -- are made possible. Likewise, if you spend most of your thoughts on what you want to avoid, worries will materialize instead.

"You are the most powerful magnet in the universe," Byrne tells you, and "the Law of Attraction says like attracts like" (Disc 1, Track 3).

I know what you're thinking: What a clever revision of natural law! As it turns out, we've all been corrupted by the obsolete dictum that opposites attract. No wonder scant few inspired minds with a 7th-grade education could master The Secret.

Still, it's easy to comprehend The Secret's advice that you focus your thoughts on the positive outcomes so to avoid life's uglier transpirings. This is what they may have told you in driving school. Should you find yourself in a skid or coming upon an obstacle, focus your sight instead on where want to go. Because if you look at the tree long enough, you'll hit it no matter what you do.

But I've hit "trees" that I'd never even seen nor thought of, you say. I've encountered freak obstacles that previously had no basis in my idealistic, Pollyanna mind. Did I attract those misfortunes, too?

Yes. Yes you did.

This philosophy implies not a little accountability for one's own satisfaction with life. What you soon learn is simple: every ill that befalls you is only a lapse in your willingness to think happy thoughts.

What a relief to find that The Secret doesn't get any more complicated than this! I mean, if it did, then it wouldn't be so damn practicable in day-to-day living, now would it?

THE SECRET APPLIED

"When I discovered the Secret, I did not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good" (Disc 4, Track 2). -- Rhonda Byrne

This is the kind of change we're talking about here -- tuning out inconveniences of any kind. The problem with hurricane victims in the Gulf Coast, war casualties in the Middle East, and AIDS sufferers in Africa, is that they don't make us feel good. These whining Winifreds are serious threats to your happiness and should be ignored altogether, or, if they absolutely insist on having your attention, you may teach them The Secret.

But what really makes us happy is money. Rhonda Byrne knows this, and undoes our finanical self-sabotage with old-fashioned common sense:

"It is as easy to manifest one dollar as it is to manifest one million dollars... The reason why one may come faster and the other may take longer, is because you thought a million dollars was a lot of money and that one dollar was not very much!" (Disc 2, Track 11)

Not me, that's not the problem (I no longer believe in the concept of numbers). It's just that other people think a million dollars is a lot of money, or else my mint-condition DVD of The Grudge would have made me a rich man on eBay last week.

The Secret really needs to get around to these tightwads. And there's something for them, too: if you want to live a life of opulance, according to The Secret, just pretend that you already do.

Millions of Americans in "debt" are already embracing this facet of the The Secret. Suppose you're too much of a pussy for their bold approach. Just use the power of positive imagination to acquire your wants.

Actual example: The key to getting that BMW you've always wanted is to visualize yourself already having it, thus eliminating the feeling that you need it. A nice Buddhist touch there, you might say -- doing away with all wants, especially those of the material nature -- but keep in mind that this is all part of the plan to snag that sweet Beamer. And so, through the Law of Attraction, you should be able to use those good feelings to obtain the BMW, which is something, if you're doing this right, that you no longer desire. The Universe will only give you what you want if you don't really want it.

It's the same for weight loss. On one hand, The Secret's contributors suggest you surround yourself with pictures of your ideal body, so binging-and-purging Cosmo subscribers are already on the right track. At the same time, however, The Secret says you must look in the mirror and feel good about the body you already have, and the positive energy produced therewith shall attract that perfect body to you. Eating right and exercising will just kind of happen... or kind of not... well, you'll have the perfect body, that's all that matters.

As one might gather at this point, achieving success in life is all about feeling good. Because if you don't feel good, then The Universe will never give you the things that make you feel good. So start feeling good.

And by the way, all its talk about The Universe may sound suspicious, but The Secret is not a cult in the traditional sense. You are to exalt yourself as a deity.

"The earth turns on its orbit for you. The oceans ebb and flow for you. The birds sing for you... Take a look around. None of it can exist without you (Disc 4, Track 23)."

All I could say was, at least somebody gets it.