Do Computer Games have Electric Erotic Dreams?

Weather has been good all week here in Hawaii, if not a little too hot. This is much better than the insane rain that we have been getting all year. I am back into doing my homework, studying, doing more homework, and staring at the World of Warcraft box that has been telling me to install it and give my soul to it. I just installed it this morning.

During my entrepreneurship class we needed to write business plans. The business plan that my peers and I came up with was a video game company specializing in MMOG. Now you need to take this all in that the teacher (not professor) for the entrepreneurship course is an idiot. His only qualifications was that he had tried to start a business and he failed. In fact he is the only disappointment for the course. Well he didn’t like our idea because 1) it didn’t involve any new technology 2) was a ‘sexy’ business meaning that video games are fun and may get a lot of attention but he seemed to think that it couldn’t make any money 3) thought that he was a master of knowledge about mainland China because he once lived in Hong Kong. Well looking at the cover of Business Week, it about how awesome the MMOG industry is.

So Fuck You Mr. Helm.

Something that I thought was awesome was that thy translated the national anthem into Spanish called “Nuestro Himno”. I’m not a huge fan of the national anthem because simply it isn’t that great of a song. This has upset some people, including the president of the United States (who is not my president). He said “I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English.” Well the last time I checked English wasn’t the official language of the United States. I wonder if the president gets his dick tied in a knot when the Constitution is translated, or the Declaration of Independence.

Personally I’m going to work on a new American flag that involves light greens, pinks, and purples so that those that are color blind can see the flag in all its glory.

I heard Roger Ebert ate a human baby

I was unsuccessful in locating Roger Ebert for the beating that he so sorely deserves. I’m going to continue to keep an eye out though, as soon as he lands in Honolulu I’m going to be there with a cup of extremely hot Kona coffee.

My Chicago trip was great, the flight from Honolulu to Chicago was not. Now I’m back and have tons of work to catch up on and a stack of finals that I’m going to be involved with in the next few weeks. I also bought World of Warcraft but have not installed it yet. I’m a little frightened to see how this will consume my life, Oblivion has already done that. I have not installed it yet, but it is talking to me I’m going to break soon.

I don’t know if I have mentioned this before but I have my internship, it will be in Tokyo starting in the middle of August. It is going to be with Trans-Science, a venture capitalist firm specializing in biotechnology companies. That is all I should say about it besides that I feel that I got a perfect internship, I’m really looking forward to it. Right now I’m counting down the days until my classes end.

Long day

I’m in the Chicago area, no sign of Roger Ebert. I’m going to find you fat man!

Yesterday was a crazy day. I had an eight hour flight, add five hours from the time difference. I took a nap. Went to my old job to have lunch with some of the boys. Well I ended up having lunch with my good pal Mark and we went to Big Al’s Beef. Now you would think that a place called Big Al’s Beef isn’t an excellent place for vegetarians, but you would be wrong. This place has the best vegetarian sandwiches in Chicago and they also have fried taters doused with blue cheese. Well we’re eating and my old boss comes in, I didn’t want him to know I was there. Like a bad sitcom even more people from work arrived, all of whom I didn’t want to know I was in town because they would want to talk to me.

After that fiasco I went to my old university to defend my starred papers. This was actually fun, I shot the shit with my old professors and they spent more time arguing with each other than asking me questions. They did both comment that my papers were excellent (“International Law and Human Cloning,” and “President Leadership Style of Lyndon Johnson and the Crisis Leading to the Six-Day War,”). In the end I had success so everyone may now call me “Master.”

I visited with some family and then saw a Cubs game (I usually listen to them over the internet). Of course they won. Still no Roger Ebert. In the end I slept for a long time.

I'll see you in a dark ally Mr. Ebert

If there is one thing that I seem to like for no good reason it is movie reviews. I don’t really know why, and I don’t really think that it is something that I could do. I listen to Ebert and Roper every week, and have even caught a movie at Ebert’s theater every once and a while. This doesn’t mean that I take stock in all the reviews, I usually don’t but sometimes use it as an excuse to get out of seeing a movie that I don’t want to see.

Now Roger Ebert has done it, first by wearing too much make-up on the daily show and now with this quote, “I believe that the nature of the [videogame] medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art… Videogames represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized, and empathetic.” Here is my response to you Mr. Ebert, “Fuck you.” 100 years ago people were saying the same thing about movies. The primary difference that I see between video games today is that in video games you can interact with the environment, while in movies you are limited to being an observer.

In a couple of hour I’m going to be entering a plane that will take me to Chicago. I’ll find you Mr. Ebert, and we’ll have some words together… maybe a cup of coffee.

Lollapalooza

It seems to me that the first instance that people realize that they are old usually comes to music. For me it was going to see a 90s cover band, it was interesting to see a band cover Pearl Jam and then Phish, then Soundgarden and Re Hot Chili Peppers. Then came the more common realization that all the new music that is coming out sucks, except for your old favorite artists. So I have made it a goal to find new music that is good the last few years and with a few exceptions this has been a little difficult. This task was made even more so with the fact that I like very little rap music, which ended up ruling out both Rap and metal music. There was some success with Thievery Corporation, Zero 7, White Stripes, and of course Velvet Revolver.

Recently I have discover three bands that I think are absolutely awesome; the Subways, Secret Machines, and Dresden Doll (by far one of the best bands in a long time). Now all three of these new favorites are playing Lollapalooza, Grant Park Chicago in August; and as it happens it looks as if I’ll happen to be in town. The festival is also going to have Sonic Youth, Ween, Editors, and Blues Traveler.

Now to show my age I have been to two Lollapaloozas before, the original (Body Count, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Nine Inch Nails) and the 3^rd one (Primus, Fishbone, Front 242, Rage Against the Machine, Tool, and Babes in Toyland). I missed the second one with Lush. This could be a way for me to return to my youth, then again everything seemed to line up just too good.

Product Liability and Government

Sometimes I have strange “train of thought” theories. In my Japanese Law class we need to write short reflection papers about issues, concepts, etc. I had one due yesterday and had one of these “train of thought” theories: one that I’m going to share.

This has to deal with tort law, specifically product liability. Basically product liability deals with injuries due to products. As evidenced throughout the universe of product warnings, like the one on my toaster that says do not use in the shower or bath, in the United States there are a lot of law suits based on injury, or damages, due to a product. There is a lot less in Japan, and one of these reasons may be because of the Safety Goods System which is a self certification regime that certifies products, and will settle with people who claim damages out of court in less time, but for less money. Overall though in Japan there are less product liability lawsuits than the United States (who I dub the Pope of Product Liability Lawsuits.

So here is my thought. If there is a self-certification regime who is at fault when there are damages due to the product the manufacturer or the certification regime. Usually it is the manufacturer, they have more money. It should be the regime though, the manufacturer pays the regime to certify their product and set the standards. Then again the regime is supported by the corporations which really makes the standards. What about a certification regime that is supported by the consumers (the people), if they certify a product and it then ends up harming people then who is at fault. In short using the same logic it would be the consumers fault. There are two such regimes in the United States. The first are groups like consumer reports and the like, which is only partially supported by the consumers. The second, and important for this debate, is the government. The government speaks for the people (in a democratic government) and because we have set up safety standards for certain goods there is precedent for the government to set standards for any good. This regime obviously already exists, therefore the consumers are therefore responsible for damages due to product liability. If there are no standards then it is the decision of the people to not have standards.

Do I believe this, no, but it makes sense to me. When we are electing a government, deciding on government issues I think that we are looking into more than just a handful of issues. Some people are single issue voters (mostly stupid people) and get upset when there is another issue that bites them in the ass. Government is much deeper than issues like abortion, affirmative action, etc; not that these issues are not important because they are. The point is that there is more to government than what most people think. The question to “do governments matter” is a different issue.

When Nine Inch Nails become the A*Teens

I use my iPod a lot. When I think of the most important inventions that have changed my life I would think to put it with the personal computer at the top of the list. To be truthful though it really isn’t that important thinking of things like airplanes (how else would I get to the mainland), pants, algebra, and of course the big mother – language.

So the iPod is unimportant sort of, still mine is flipping out. First one wouldn’t think of it but fitting 30GB of music on this thing is a chore, I spent an hour trying to rearrange my playlists and trying to get it so I could have all the songs I wanted on the thing. According to my iPod I’m going to be spending 13 full days listening to music. What is wrong with me? More importantly in the non-cosmic sense is that the album covers are not being displayed correctly. I try to get album covers on every piece of music I have, it is a job that may be finished at some point in the future where there are three or more hours added to the day. Still I have a lot of my songs associated with an album cover. The problem is that the iPod doesn’t display the correct cover (iTunes does) I listen to Goldfrapp and I had a Rammstien cover on screen which is kind of funny. PJ Harvey becomes all Dream Theater, Dresden Dolls was The Beatles, and my favorite was Danger Doom becoming Tori Amos Boys for Pele.

So this was my day, looking at what crazy combination there were, and making an IT presentation, and talking about Japanese Law, and learning how to hedge T-Bills, and learning some more Japanese.

Need time to listen to Mindcrime 2

Gaming is like crack to me, video gaming can sometimes up end many things in my life. Right now much of my time is being spent playing Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion, and Kingdom Hearts 2. This game playing has been severely hampered by school work, which is more productive. Productivity is overrated anyway, as human beings we can not always be productive. This is a case in point with a fellow classmate who has been continuously “productive” though they broke down and spent an entire week watching DVDs of TV shows. My couple hours playing Oblivion really pales in comparison to that.

One disappointment with Kingdom Hearts 2, I have recently found out that there is no Disney Corporate stage where we fight Michael Eisner. Capital!! I was really hoping that rumor I just made up was true.

Spanky Monkey-Lizard, of Clan Monkey-Lizard

Waikiki is covered with shit. It has rained over 100 inches here in Honolulu from the start of the year. I guess when Cas and I were on the Big Island it rained so much that the sewage overflowed onto the streets. I had to walk by the Marina to get to my car and the water was filled with sewage. The smell was worse than anything that I could imagine.

Coming back to class was a pain in the ass. Yesterday we got an assignment to read an entire book, and a case study, then do a presentation… tomorrow. Group project due today too, and two for tomorrow, and another much longer one next week.

On the plus side the sports season has finally arrived, Baseball started yesterday and F1 started a couple of weeks ago. Along with the release of several awesome computer games (Elder Scrolls IV and Kingdom Hearts II) I haven’t the time to enjoy the finer things in life.