The Sea With Black Ink

Video Games…always seemed like a sport that I just didn’t know how to play. Yeah that’s right…I’m a weak little noob.
Back in the days of the original Nintendo, and the original Super Mario games, I was the queen, I was the one that messed with the weak little noobs. I lived and breathed that f-ing game…but, as those controllers got more and more complex, I consequently became less and less interested. I only have 10 fingers…don’t ask so much of me!!
Now, I look at some of my friends (mainly the dudes) and I wonder just how much their gaming sensibilities have affected their lives. Like, since they play about 10 hours out of a day, perhaps that means they have a diminished attention span (selective perhaps), low sex drive, perhaps gaming could also provide an explanation for that extra roll of fat that presides around their waistlines. I don’t know if I buy into that whole notion that playing video games makes you behave aggressively…in my opinion, hardcore gamers have to be lazy…aggression goes against the lazy vibe, therefore video games do not make people aggressive…or if they do, it combats the aggressive feelings with laziness?
I do think it affects prosocial behavior though. Its like anything else…once you reach that level of obsession, it’s gonna affect your personal life; the way you relate to others.
Sure maybe gaming is like I donno, a refuge from the mundane tribulations of every day life…maybe it’s like a legal equivalent to smoking pot, or being a base head. All your base are belong to us! Haha! Perhaps Gamers just find most people uninteresting, and are thus less socially inept than one would think. Perhaps they avoid social situations not because video games have ‘rot their brains’, but because they just don’t feel a sense of community with the masses. Maybe they really aren’t socially handicapped, maybe ‘real life’ is for posers…kay, well, some of them definitely are social retards…lets be frank.
Some people might describe video games as a test of skill…unless you have it on EASY you nerd!! For instance, the Legend of Zelda…very easy. Does that make Halo the bible in gamer terms? Is being ‘pwned’ by Warcraft the same as going to hell? Or is that more the equivalent of getting a bad evaluation at work?
Gamers worldwide, I summon you!
I’m totally lost.

One thing I will say. VIDEO GAMES do NOT appeal to women. Or at least women with SLIGHT feminist sensibilities and a little self-respect.
Seriously, the whole damsel in distress thing makes me encounter the same harsh feelings that surfaced when I watched Sin City. Without a doubt, amazing cinematography…brilliant, but why the F#*K do all the women have to be either useless twats–with their tits falling out, pleading for their men to save them–or like knife-wielding lesbian cunts with a lust for vengence? Yeah, I used the c-word. And I apologize if it offends. But I get a little heated when I feel like I’m not being represented fairly.
Same goes for videogames.
Phoenix though…she is the balls. I love her!!
She just pwned your ass noob!!

Damn it all!
I just can’t get my shit together to write this Blog today, so you’ll all have to forgive my lack luster effort here. I think I’m getting the shakes from low blood sugar…
Or, perhaps my 6th cup of coffee is causing a complete brain aneurism.
The buzz is only convincing me that I want to go back to Calgary tonight, and unnecessarily enjoy a ripper with my friends at the MYNT…the MYNT!! Like, quite possibly the lamest bar in Calgary right now. I swear to God, every time I go there I watch the bouncers (I.e. USELESS Chachbags with shaved chests and gold medallions) hold an unnecessary line of people out in the cold. WHY?! Listen up! They do it as a complete means to collect money from people who are TOO sick of waiting and feel forced to buy their way in. So what? So they can encounter useless people in the bar, top 40’s, and probably get stabbed in the heart trying to get a freakin’ martini! O-kay, vodka soda.
That place used to be awesome, but I suppose it just got the disease of every bar in a big city, the WRONG crowds came, and everyone went the other way.
So why am I considering going? I don’t have the SLIGHTEST clue.
I think it’s seriously the coffee buzz talking.
And why is it that I’m too busy downloading Torrents on TO. to do my homework?
Why is it that I’ve bought Metric tickets instead of registering for a summer class I could DEFINITELY use towards my degree? (The presale password is ‘HOSPITAL’ btw.)

AND I REALLY want to take the Summer Semester III Mass Communications SOCI course, but I’d also like to sit on the beach at my cabin in Parksville and get fat for a week from way too many Daquiris and kettle chips…I’m really torn. Feed my brain? Or enjoy other aesthetically pleasing sensations…mostly in my stomach…but I think it’s safe to say vacation generally appeals to all the sensations.

I feel like I’m being overloaded with WAAAAY too much information, and my mind is unable to compute where the best solution is, and I’m in LETHBRIDGE!! Imagine if I was in a bigger city…no wonder all these Hollywood Starlets get addicted to crack, coke, or whatever the new pill is that equates to a good time in Plastic land. I think I’d lose my mind and start taking Horse tranquilizers under the same circumstances.
We’re constantly being bombarded with messages (overt/covert), and they are clogging our brains up with nonsense. I even notice it in my efforts to move into my new condo. I see a build-up of tough guck and grunge in the bathroom sink, and immediately my mind jumps to those cheesy CLR commercials. I WILL buy CLR, why? Because consumerist bullshit REALLY works on me!

Name brands are generally the name of MY game at the supermarket, and it’s not like I own a pair of jeans that cost me less than $200. Kay…I’m starting to feel bad about myself…so I’m gonna go eat some name brand chips before I go to class, or maybe some Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. Down with health.

And I bet it all just boils down to the fact that I shouldn’t of had that 6th cup of coffee…Starbucks coffee. I’m such a freaking sell-out. I totally buy into name brands!! Starbucks coffee tastes like burnt chalk…why do I love it so much?
I didn’t eat chalk when I was a child…okay maybe the odd stick? I can’t remember, it seems like something I would have been more willing to make my little sister do instead…well, that and having her make-out with Skeletor on TV, and putting the head of her Skeletor action figure doll inside an Oreo and eating it…OH! And that time I convinced her that she was in a coma for a year when she saw a car commercial for next years model, and was confused. I also liked to lock her up in the Treehouse, and play ‘hurricane’. This game involved turning the hose on her and seeing how well she did under the pressure. I used to make her consume mass proportions of grass (no, not the kind your thinking…mary jane didn’t even exist to me at that time); I merely wanted her to think there was milk in it if she chewed on the stems, purely health motivated
AND finally, there was that time we had the 90 year old relatives over for a family dinner, and I convinced her the names of ‘Salt’ and ‘Pepper’ were ‘sh*t’ and ‘f#ck’.
You can imagine the distress I put my mother through…”can you please pass me the ____”. Such a shit…I’m lucky my sister didn’t turn out to be a serial killer…or better yet, I’m lucky I DIDN’T. All those kids who used to put the gophers heads in their bike spokes and peddle, well sorry guys, but I can’t say the same for you…sadistic creepers.
I think I got sidetracked…(**Hunky Dorry?**)
Too late now…I totally blame the coffee.

So, I’ve decided that Bob Barker might actually be 1000 years old, and I think he might have gotten a brow lift…there is NO way some one can look that surprised ALL the time! This is Bob Barker reminding you to help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered! Why doesn’t someone have you spayed or neutered Bob Barker?? Is it just me, or does he look like beef jerky?

The price is WRONG bitch!!

But yes, commercials, ads, propaganda! I think that I’m beginning to loathe that deodorant commercial…I think it’s for degree…I’m just not sure. But I’m sure you all know the one: Dude goes for a jog, girlfriend smells his shirt after he gets back, which in my mind is just asking for trouble cuz he looks like he might be REALLY European (and consequently doesn’t bathe), and yeah, she’s pissed cuz it’s dry and doesn’t smell bad. She thinks he was snogging the girl down the street, and she probably wouldn’t be wrong. The worst part…it has been on the air for…years, I donno, like 10 years or something. ☺ The people in the commercial are probably dead by now; it’s been on the air THAT long. And after all this time, they still can’t get their mouths to move with the voiced over monologue. Must be a European thing or something. The dude looks European, which makes me think that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for him to return from a jog without smelling like a rotting carcass, a can of pickled asparagus, or that sulphery gutter/sewage smell that always emerges when you’re sightseeing in a European city, and think that you’ve suddenly seen the most beautiful thing ever known to man. Speaking of ‘Man’, I’d like to say we’ve all come a long way since ROSIE the RIVETER, but sometimes I wonder. Even though men and women seem to both be appearing equally in prime-time commercials, and popular ads these days, it appears to me that the roles are generally adhering to a REALLY traditional model that depicts women as unemployed and in the home, and men, as a clapping fool in a business suit in car commercials, or some fat trailer-park slob with his hands down his pants crushing a beer can on his head. I HAVE actually noticed that more men are appearing in the role of ‘spouse’ and ‘father’ with no apparent occupation, but I don’t really feel like it’s an equal representation. Women are still more likely than men to be seen in domestic settings, advertising products used in the home. Like seriously…no one likes to Swifter that much…really (plus that shit kills your pets, maybe they should have a dead lassie dog in the background just to keep it real). Even though the gender gap seems to have become smaller, women are still more likely to be shown as the users of the products they are advertising in commercials and ads. And you’d think these women were having a full-blown orgasm every time they removed that stain, scrubbed that bathtub, swallowed that Draino. Yeah, sometimes I feel like I’m in Pleasantville. And surprise surprise, there’s almost always a male narrator. And you know, my chauvinist pig, disgusting roommate really believes in those ads and commercials. He’s already picked out his type A version of a cleaning slave wife he’d like to have. I can tell you this by the mess he leaves for me to clean up after him every time he rips the kitchen apart for a meal (and I use the word ‘meal’ loosely, it’s more like deep fried, breaded meat with cool whip on it). Some times I leave the dishes, try and make a stand…they’ll sit there for days, and since he doesn’t even know how to scrape his plates… you can imagine how crusted they are by the end of a couple days…fruit flies inclusive. Either way, more work for me. I think that the day before I leave for my new condo I’m going to rip all of his sheets off his bed (I should probably wear latex gloves while doing this, there might be some unhappy surprises, sort of like the ones I’ve occasionally found in my face cloths) then I can throw all his dirty dishes into the sheet and leave them on his bed. I bet you all 100 dollars that he’d just move them over and sleep next to them. I think that’s the fairest assumption…he is such a walking garbage can.
The reality is, contemporary commercials and ads are a reflection of their viewers SEX-ROLE attitudes, and they are all highly researched, calculated, and contributed. These people know what they’re doing. So…I can’t really be angry with the media because my roommate is an idiot, I’m just looking at you people, the public…and I ask you. What the hell are we doing wrong??