Wisdom of the Day: Straws Binders Button Grief

Video Game: Far Cry 3

So, I played through Far Cry 3 and it was a lot of fun. It’s an open world first person shooter where you’re on this tropical island constantly ducking into brush and taking out the enemy. Some compare it a first person shooter Skyrim, but it had no one where near the depth of Skyrim. Still, I spent a ton of time playing it and didn’t even do all the subquests (I have too little time and too many games to play to hundred percent games).

I heard some complaints about the story (and accusations of racism), but I thought the story of some young partier who never held a gun before gradually becoming a killing machine was pretty good, and the voice acting (and character models) were great. In fact, I was surprised there wasn’t any big name actors doing the voice acting, because it was all so well done.

So I really liked the game. But it was short of great so I’m just going to spend the rest of this post pointing out the flaws.

* The hunting aspect was neat where you hunt animals to craft new gear, but there was no depth to it and it was really early in the game I already did all the hunting I needed to craft the best gear.

* You do lots of things to get money, but it ended up being somewhat pointless since you could just wait and eventually unlock all the different weapons for free doing normal quest stuff.

* I loved the capturing outpost sidequest where you went to an enemy base and tried to quietly kill everyone there without being spotted (sometimes using wild animals like tigers against them), but I found out that was working against the fun of the game. Because when you captured an outpost, that meant enemy soldiers no longer appeared in the are. And to me, a lot of the fun of traveling around the island was randomly encountering enemies and then quickly slipping into the jungle and deciding whether you wanted to try and sneak up and kill them or not.

* The bow was cool, but kinda useless compared to silences sniper rifles where you don’t have to adjust for distance (had any game realistically portrayed a sniper rifle where you actually do have to adjust for wind and distance instead of just line up the crosshairs?).

* The bad guy, Vaas, was awesome, but not in the game nearly enough. The other bigger bad, Hoyt, wasn’t in it much and wasn’t that memorable.

* You could use a skill point to unlock the ability to fire a handgun while going down a zip line, but how was inaccurately firing a hand gun for a couple seconds while going down a zip line supposed to be very useful?

* I only played the multiplayer briefly, and it just seemed like bare bones version of what you’d get from Call of Duty. But, whatever, I only really cared about the single player part.

* While the main story quests were quite cool, the sidequests called story quests all seemed to be boring fetch quests. The non-story side quests where you had to sneak up and kill a pirate with a knife were much more fun.

* The game was very violent and thus playing it may make you want to shoot up a school.

The Advantages of a Bad Economy

High school graduation is up. This is apparently related to the bad economy as people are staying in school as there are no job opportunities out there. That makes me think: Maybe we should look more on the bright side of the horrible Obama economy.

GREAT THINGS FROM OBAMA’S BAD ECONOMY

* Illegal immigration is down.

* Less emissions with so many fewer people needed to drive to work each day.

* Gives us time to appreciate the bare necessities of life.

* Wallets lasting longer with so much less wear and tear on them.

* Pedophiles these days are less able to afford a windowless van.

What are your favorite advantages of a bad economy?

Abortion: The Forever Contentious Issue

So I guess yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Have you ever actually read the decision? If you do and look really carefully, you’ll see a brief cameo by the Constitution.

I mean, you could love abortion — I mean just absolutely adore abortion and want as many as possible — and still should easily see that the Roe v. Wade decision is idiotic and has nothing to do with the Constitution. It’s as blatant judicial activism as is possible. Like the whole trimesters part — where are trimesters in the Constitution? I thought the point of the Supreme Court was to answer whether current laws are constitutional or not, not make up your own laws based on whatever the crap science of the day is. Of course, I’m not a constitutional scholar — I’m just a guy with basic reading comprehension… and thus much more qualified than most of the Supreme Court Justices from the past hundred years.

But like I said, they weren’t even pretending to do a constitutional decision, the Supreme Court instead had this fantasy idea in their head they could use their power to settle a contentious issue. Good going, guys. That really worked out.

I think the main flaw in their plan and why abortion continues to be contentious is that it involves killing babies. And there is just not a scenario where suddenly everyone deadens their morality and is okay with that. I mean, they can shout “It’s just a clump of cells!” or “It’s a woman’s choice!” and they’ll successfully give some people a reason to close their eyes to what’s happening, but the horrific reality of what abortion is — where we turn on our greatest gift, our children, and kill them — is always going to overpower whatever nonsense one tells him or herself. There is no happy future where every is okay with abortion. Because at their hearts, no one really is.

Random Thoughts: Roe v. Wade, Beyonce, and South America

You ever actually read the Roe v. Wade decision? It’s pretty surreal.

I don’t get the support of it. You could absolutely love abortion and still think Roe v. Wade was decided in an idiotic fashion.

Isn’t the whole marketing of Trix based on the assumption that kids really hate rabbits and like watching them suffer?

Obama didn’t want the national anthem sung at his inauguration because he finds it annoying and what Beyonce did was the compromise.

RTs do not equals endorsements, but favoriting means I at least chuckled.

Calling it “South America” always confused me. Shouldn’t it be called “South of America”?

Why won’t everyone get back to my emails immediately? I need to be more important.

Abortion will always be a contentious issue because it involves killing babies.

Getting your hack on

The White House wants you hackers to hack.

Yep, on June 1 and 2, they want you to participate in a National Day of Civic Hacking. They’re wanting hackers to participate in all 50 states. As I write this, 27 cities are participating, including 5 in Georgia, counting Columbus (where I am).

I don’t see Boise on the list, so I don’t know if Frank is going to participate. I think Harvey is within 100 miles of one of them, but I don’t know if he’s going to participate. It’s a weekend, so people that have Monday-Friday jobs will be able to play along.

Am I going to participate? I don’t know. A lot, but not all, of the computer hacky types around here are goofy liberals. I might show up just to piss them off.

Anyway, if you were to participate, what would you do?

How would you “hack for a cause?”