Superfluous Third Wheel

"All the World's a twat, and the people in it, merely pubic hairs."

Misquote?

Well, I've juiced the proverbial lemon of Christmas cheer; and so once again it is time to give a warm, heartfelt welcome to The Winter of Discontent, for he shall be your host over the next couple of weeks. Let us all make sure he feels it to be time well spent...

It's Christmas again. Where's my leaning-pole?

It dawned on me, some time ago, that Kathryn bears more than a passing resemblance to Brendan, were Brendan blonde.

And female.

As was, of course, inferred by the inclusion of the "e" in "blonde". But then, you knew that already, didn't you?

I agree with Trystan. We have evolved as omnivores because somewhere, at some point along the evolutionary chain, Mister Man thought "I'll bet cooked rabbit would taste much better than these bloody brussel sprouts.". At the time, he perhaps did not consider the moral and ethical implications of such a choice because, well, the collective human psyche simply hadn't evolved to that degree. However, if one of the fundamental principles which differentiates us from the "other animals"; by which we define ourselves as "human", is that we are capable of reasoning; of moralising; of rationalising; of independent thought in general, then any argument founded around the notion that "we evolved this way so who am I to break the trend?" is the obsolete relic of a past existence we no longer acknowledge to be our own. If we are sufficiently evolved to justify the taking of "lesser lives" in order to fuel our own selfish desires, then we ought to be sufficiently evolved to change ourselves.

The fact of the matter is that, given the extent to which we have evolved intellectually from the point at which our stomachs made all our decisions for us, eating meat is a vice. I acknowledge my conscious indulgence of said vice irrespective of the implications I KNOW to exist by virtue of being human (and I'd like to think, intelligent) to be essentially unjustifiable by any means other than dogma and rhetoric. But so what? We all have our vices, some more so than others. I am willing to adopt an attitude of mutual tolerance so long as the beliefs of one faction do not infringe upon the practises of another, but in addition I cannot delude myself into thinking that the choice I have made is the "right" one simply by virtue of it being the majority-minded, utilitarian way.

Adapted from a comment posted on Lisa's blog... because, meat-eater's mentality notwithstanding, my second vice is utter inability to resist the temptation to prompt debate and discourse on any given issue. Enjoy.

Your Ultimate Purity Score Is...
Category	Your Score	Average
Self-Lovin'	65% Explored the pleasures of the flesh	65%
Shamelessness	92.9% Has yet to see self in mirror	79.3%
Sex Drive	92.1% The Pope is envious	77.7%
Straightness	91.1% Just go fuck something, okay?	44.9%
Gayness	100%	83.4%
Fucking Sick	99.1% Refreshingly normal	89.9%
You are 90.28% pure Average Score: 72.6%
Take The Ultimate Purity Test and see how you match up!

I was so very tempted to fake it... I really, really was. I'm such a loser ;P

Quite right: I know of him only on the basis of comments posted on your blog, and the occasional conversation over MSN. And yet you can profess to love him based on very much the same, decidedly limited impression? Sorry, but I refuse to believe that allows you to gain an accurate reflection of his personality beyond the basic, conversational level... if that. You can garner very different interpretations of someone's personality over the phone and internet, which do not necessarily correlate with how that person is like face-to-face.

Of course, you're absolutely right: I don't know [him]. But do you? Really? I'm not saying you shouldn't entertain the possibility that the "real" him might well match up with the internet/phone persona you've fallen "in love" with; I'm just sceptical as to whether it is wise to commit yourself to these emotions when it is entirely possible - however unlikely - that you may be disappointed, and that ultimately, [he] will feel hurt and rejected as a result; particularly given the lengths he seems willing to go to in order to visit you.

Adapted from a post on someone else's blog. Do you think I'm being cynical, or rational? I don't know anymore... maybe I don't have all the facts, in which case, I apologise. But it doesn't do any harm to play the caution card.

Sorry, but... charismatic?

Quote of the Day:
Mrs. Hooper: ...and the Head Speaker of the House of Lords sits on the "woolsack"; so called because it symbolises the way in which Britain made its fortune.
Me: On its arse?

Profesh: lol, I gave the helm to a newb
Profesh: some people can't even afford that much
Exe: well it's supply and demand isn't it
Profesh: I don't see how that is relevant to the context
Profesh: Charsi seems to have all the items she could possibly need
Profesh: and you don't need gold
Exe: I NEEDED ik helm, yet u gave it away u wanted tals but didn't need
Profesh: so you sold it
Profesh: you didn't give it away
Exe: I gave it to Charsi for 35k
Profesh: I was at least benefitting someone else, you benefitted no-one
Profesh: you did it out of spite :)
Exe: damn right
Exe: I never keep tal's armour less than 500 unid def or 900 ide'd, I always sell 'em
Profesh: I need to scrounge all I can; you wilfully chuck most of your wealth away and you still have Breath of the Dying items and numerous high-level runes
Exe: well u shud have gave me that fucking helm
Exe: I NEEDED it
Profesh: so shall we just ignore the Vex rune you only got because I agreed to mule?
Profesh: given that a Vex is probably worth considerably more than 0.5 cold skillers
Exe: lol will cud have done it but he was on hc so you were the easiest option
Exe: lets remember the 2 fireskillers u ripped me for
Profesh: erm, it's not ripping you off if you're fully informed
Profesh: you traded consentingly, in spite of the fact that you deemed the asking price unreasonable
Profesh: you can't criticise me for taking advantage of that opportunity
Exe: no ur a twat for taking advantage of the situation
Profesh: perhaps you should be angry at yourself for agreeing to trade in the first place
Exe: they are also NOWHERE near perfect you fucking gypsy
Profesh: well, I assumed they were, but it pays to be informed
Exe: theyre closer to SHIT than perf actually
Profesh: you should always double-check
Exe: so ill sell all the fkin tals i want
Profesh: fine, be childish and bitter about it... it solves nothing... but by selling that tal's all you intended to do was fulfill a personal vendetta
Exe: and I did
Profesh: when I gave away that ik helm, I was conscious of the fact that I was helping someone in much greater need
Profesh: if you're wealthy, you should be prepared to pay for the convenience with an item of equal standing... I wasn't trying to rip you at all
Profesh: a small charm of sustenance would have sufficed
Exe: FFS its IK HELM YOU DONT MAKE PEOPLE PAY FOR IK HELM
Profesh: why not? don't be so proud
Exe: IK FUCKING HELM FFS!! its worthless and I needed it and U GAVE IT AWAY so u deserve it
Profesh: I didn't sell it
Profesh: I gave it away out of charity
Exe: the fact that I sold the armour evens the need score
Exe: I'll sell any other fkers I find
Profesh: no, it puts the ball in my court... your motivation for doing so was revenge; I consented to pay a reasonable price for the armour to begin with, given that you didn't need it
Profesh: and yet you still proceeded to sell it out of spite
Profesh: you benefitted no-one through your actions
Exe: I did
Profesh: yourself?
Profesh: and don't say "Charsi"
Profesh: she's an NPC
Profesh: all in all I have been perfectly rational and reasonable from the outset... whereas you blame me for mistakes borne of what seems to be pride and arrogance
Profesh: but holding grudges doesn't solve anything

Ah... Diablo 2 is such a soap opera sometimes :P

I am so drunk.

"We all know that Papa has a brand-new Bag, but must he insist on wearing her on his arm like that?"

Welcome to the Superfluous Third Wheel.

You be my laptop and I'll be your hard drive, baby.

Columbine High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enjoyed playing "Doom" -- one of the most popular first-person shooter games of all time, psychologists Craig Anderson of the University of Missouri-Columbia and Karen Dill of Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C., wrote in an article in the April 2000 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Their study argues that playing violent games is directly related to violent behavior.

Apologies in advance for not toeing the "party line", but is it wholly inconceivable that the particular affinity these kids would seem to exhibit for games depicting "realistic violence", may in fact stem from an inherently violent and unstable mental disposition? Of course, in that context, it would be nonetheless valid to cite the playing of violent games as being "directly related" to violent behaviour - that is to say, the more inherently violent your mentality, the more likely you are to derive enjoyment from such activities, by default. I'm quite sure that there are a good number of teenage girls out there undergoing daily exposure to these games, but do you ever see the headline "15 year-old girl shoots dead classmates"? No? That's because men are, by virtue of what makes them male, less rational, more liable to exhibit violent tendencies, and more likely to perceive physical violence as a means to resolving real-world disputes; thus, it is only natural that two boys exhibiting an unhealthy obsession with firearms and gun-related violence should be inclined to satiate their appetite for carnage in a manner befitting the nature of their obsession - namely, with guns.

In this sense, of course, one could quite justifiably remark that their inherent mental instability chose to manifest itself in the form of a fetish for lethal weaponry and extreme violence, but to cite violent games as being the root cause of such perversion is short-sighted in the extreme. Rather, I would argue such a depraved obsession to be merely symptomatic of an already diseased mind. That is not to say, of course, that all who play these games share such an extreme, morbid obsession, but it is the mental illness which renders them unable to distinguish fantasy from reality, or to inhibit the drive which compels them to commit such acts in real life - much in the same vein as any murderer one might care to mention - whether the cause of this illness be attributed to nature or nurture. Were exposure to these games really such a universal threat to the sanity of our nations' youth, then these "high-school shootings" should be epidemic in proportion; as it happens, they aren't, and I would have thought that this alone might suggest the presence of other, more crucial, contributing factors.

To be honest, whether or not such exposure is potentially harmful depends ultimately upon the innate psychology of one's target audience. Let us take, as an example, Adolf Hitler: granted, here was an undoubtedly depraved individual who contributed to the realisation of an ideology which lay in direct contravention with the moral and ethical codes of conduct by which we define modern, Western civilisation, but the fact of the matter is that there must be literally millions of like-minded individuals alive out there in the World today; the differentiating factor existent in that, not only did Hitler harbour these particularly depraved ambitions, but he was also presented with the ideal means by which to render them a devastating reality. Conversely, history reports that a youth who harboured an all-consuming fascination with science and chemical processes when applied in a human context was given a chemistry set for his sixteenth birthday, and promptly set about carrying out lethal experiments on members of his own family. Does that mean we should ban children from all scientific pursuits? Of course not; no more so than we should abolish political leadership. Such action would be unnecessarily heavy-handed and draconian, and would not serve to address the root of the problem at all, but merely to suppress the emergence of potential, short-term issues - after all, if the basic instinct to murder is there; if the mental instability prevails, then, given time, that instability will surely manifest itself via some other, less obvious, but nonethless deadly, means. Thus, it would seem that computer games serve merely as a rather convenient scapegoat for those who are desperate to be seen as pioneering some kind of constructive solution to this supposed "problem", seemingly oblivious to the degree of exposure these same minors receive daily via countless other means, and all too keen to delude themselves as to the bitter reality of the situation. What we need to do is to realise that in this World, bad things often happen to good people, for no discernible reason other than motivations of pure malice. If you inhabit a country which openly promotes gun culture; where the majority of families keep lethal weapons in the house - often without due discretion - then you must be prepared to accept the consequences.

It is often said that interactive entertainment can act as a form of catharsis; an emotional outlet for purposes of anger management and stress relief (among other things). Sometimes, such "games" are an outlet for significantly more depraved inclinations - but perhaps the real tragedy lies in the fact that, unfortunately, in this case, the computerised depiction of violence just wasn't enough. A bitter pill to swallow, maybe, but swallow we must, if progress is to be made.


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And remember, kids: confidence is the cologne that money can't buy ;)