The Fantasy That Keeps On Fibbing

I don't know about you, but I seem to get these emails and letters asking me if I like to play computer games; the follow-up is that I should then pursue the "lucrative" career of being a computer game designer (or some other job in the computer gaming field). There are some distinct fantasy errors that are present in these advertisements, and their omission drives me batty.

1. Most computer game people don't make a lot of money. Sure, some do. Most don't. For the most part, you end up being a cog in the wheel that gets crap for ridiculous hours and the job security is really, really not there. They fire you for ANYTHING in this business.

2. You MAKE computer games, not PLAY computer games. There's a big difference. Playing computer games is LOTS of fun. Making them is not. If you're a coder, you stare at computer code the entire time and wonder why Skippy the avatar bleeds colors every time he comes in contact with the evil death ball (or whatever). Or you can do one of my favorite jobs: Fix the irrigation system in Sim City. Yeah, that was fun. Or you can test games where you get to drive around a track 897,083,281 times trying to figure out why you fell into the sky on one of your turns that you can't duplicate no matter how many times you try to do so.

3. The designer jobs are easy to get. Right. There are people who have been part of the computer gaming world their entire lives who have not broken that ceiling. Good luck.

4. Some fly by night school is going to give you the tools to "make it" in the computer gaming field. Probably not. But you will spend a GREAT DEAL of money thinking it will.

5. Girls dig guys who make computer games. Okay, that one's true. I mean, nothing says sexy like "geek with computer".

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Job interview in Wyoming went well

It was my first academic job interview, so obviously I was nervous. But I think it went well. I didn't throw up on anyone, and no one died during my teaching demonstration. Well, one person, but it wasn't because of the teaching demonstration. Damn Wyoming ninjas and their blood feuds!

Everyone was pleasant. Found out the money was better than originally quoted.

Now, I'm just waiting to hear from them. Hopefully, it's good news. Either way, it was good experience.

The traveling, however, took a lot out of me. Nothing bad happened, but my itinerary consisted of driving to Sacramento, taking a plane to San Francisco, taking a plane to Denver, Colorado, getting a rental car (upgraded to a SUV! Thanks, Budget Rent aCar!), driving 5 hours to Casper, Wyoming, sleeping, doing the whole job interview and teaching demonstration thing, driving 5 hours back to Denver, Colorado, taking a plane to Sacramento (with a very nice woman who works for the military, whose husband is in the military, and whose kid made it very difficult to sit in the window seat with him jumping up and down on me, but hey, it happens), and driving back home to Stockton. Fun fun fun.

Anyway, there was this restaurant they took me to for lunch, and let's just say that if I end up moving to Casper, Wyoming, it might be my new Carl's Jr (my every morning eating place). It's called Eggs(something), and it's a medium scale restaurant, and I can have breakfast at all times of the day. Woohoo! Okay, maybe I'm just tired from the trip.

Anyhoos. Back home now. Have to work on a paper Kat and I are finishing so I can present it for us tomorrow at the Gender and Science Conference (she can't attend because she's at a debate tournament in Denver); I even flew out on the same flight as them Wednesday. Then I have to start putting real behind to chair as I start to write my thesis proposal. It needs to be done yesterday rather than tomorrow.

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Dubious Milestones

Sometimes (okay, most of the time), I hate the media. Last night, the United States achieved the "milestone" of 4,000 soldiers dead in Iraq. EVERY news station is producing this story as if Paris has stolen Helen again and we all need to buy stock in Haliburton before they send KBR to Troy. What is it with our media and numbers? The guy who died at 3,999 is probably no less important than the guy at 4,000. Come to think of it, the one who died at 3,728 really haunts me night to night.

This is what happens when a news cycle really has nothing to say, so arbitrary numbers are chosen as news stories themselves. It's like turning the camera on a stop sign and stating that it's important to look at this stop sign because people who get into accidents by ignoring stop signs are out of control. It's a stupid stop sign. 4,000 is a number, not a story. Not an event. Not the rationale behind why we should have 8 hours of news stories all about meta stories (covering the media's coverage of the war, which is what they're doing right now).

Did something new happen in Baghdad? No, not really. Is the war turning in our favor? No, not really. Is it getting worse? No, not really. In other words, THERE IS NO STORY HERE.

Sadly, I covered this same problem at 3,000 casualties. No one cared then either.

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A World Defined by Ah-Ha Politics

There's an interesting phenomenon that has emerged over the last twenty years in politics that seems to have set the course for state in a way that cannot be disengaged. We see it almost every day in political affairs, and especially during political conflicts, such as elections and scandals. It usually consists of a politician saying he or she believes one thing and then one of his or her enemies unearthing a previous broadcast, book or set of smoke signals that indicates a previous opinion of an opposing nature. I tend to refer to this as "Ah-Ha" or "Gotcha" Politics. This is why Senator Kerry can be seen as hypocritical when he says he is a veteran proud of his country, yet condemned for things he said or did in protest of a war. It is why a senator can be ransacked by political opportunists when he or she says that he or she is against the Iraq occupation now, but someone unearths that he or she was a proponent of the war when it first started. This is why someone may desire to be for the stupidest policy decisions of all time, just in hopes of avoiding the "waffler" designation that goes to someone who might ever dare to change his or her mind.

Speaking of changing his or her mind, that brings up another sidebar topic: Who was for and against the Iraq War. This is one of those subjects that has been driving me nuts because before the war started, I wrote over and over again, spoke over and over again and wrote some more over and over again about how we should not be invading Iraq because the United States people will not have the verve to last through an actual occupation of rebuilding. People told me I was full of crap and kept talking about how great our military was. I told them over and over that I didn't question our ability to topple the Iraqi Government. I questioned whether or not the people of the United States can handle a long-term occupation of a country that won't want us there. Then, of course, I received the infamous, "but they'll welcome us as liberators." Well, we now know what happened.

But I'm not upset cause no one took me seriously. Okay, I'm somewhat upset because no one took me seriously when I predicted exactly what was going to happen; this seems to be a common situation with me, in which I make predictions that will come true because I look at everything from a game theoretic value system which means I'm only wrong when irrational actions take place, yet people keep looking at me strangely when I predict something that doesn't fall into their paradigm of what they believe is going to happen. Anyway, what upsets me is that those same people who were so for the war and so for the fantasy that everything would work out okay, are now trying to pretend that they were against the war in the first place, and that "they" were the ones that were ignored back then. I don't mind that they've changed their mind; they'd be irrational not to, but what bugs me is that they try to change the game itself to pretend that they were right all along, just because they have this ridiculous desire to never be seen as foolish in their future projections.

And that's because of this whole "Ah-Ha" politics thing. If we weren't so keen on holding people accountable for any mistake they might have ever made, people might actually be willing to take a step back and say, "woh, what was I thinking? Okay, let's change our mind here." But because people keep wanting to hold everyone to anything they have ever said in the past, we find ourselves stuck having to defend ideas that are archaic, even by our own standards. Can you imagine how refreshing it would have been three years ago if the Bush Administration would have just stopped in their tracks and said, "Woh, okay that didn't work. Let's cut our losses and do what's best for the country and not our own egos." But of course, that's never going to happen, or more appropriately, it never did happen.

This paints us into a really bad corner from which we may never escape. We may think it's really funny when Jon Stewart gets on his show and throws a politician's words back in his face with old footage that reveals the hypocrisy of a politician. And yeah, I laugh, too. But I think we're actually causing more problems than we're solving whenever we focus completely on making sure that people never change their minds. It's one thing to point out when someone claims "I never said that" and then show them when they did, in fact, say that, but when someone states that he or she now believes that Policy B is better than Policy A, making them look foolish for abandoning Policy A is exactly why that politician may never switch to Policy B (the better one) in the first place. We make it so that they are held accountable for bad policies and then force them to defend bad policies because the costs (in a game theoretic) would be higher to change the game than to continue to play out a bad hand.

So, what can we do? Well, we can actually start rewarding politicians for having the foresight to change their minds when a better alternative comes before them. Otherwise, we're going to end up in a situation where we force people to continue to play a hand that can't win because we're not willing to reshuffle the deck.

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Something I've been meaning to add to the page for awhile

I finally got around to doing it. I added my book list of recommendations, based on books I have read over the last 18 years. Sure, there were a bunch before this, and there will probably be a lot after this, but I figure that with all of the reading I have done over the years, it was time to actually make a list of recommendations. And they're all over the place, too. They represent classics, science fiction, fantasy, mainstream, really strange, history, political science, economic theory and pretty much anything else that has caused me to believe the choices might help those who are looking for something good to read that isn't the "usual" rehashed lists we all got tired of a long time ago.

Anyway, the list is here, and you can also find it by choosing the choice on the menu to the right side of the blog.

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The job search is really frustrating

I had this same feeling last summer when I started looking for a job for the summer break and found absolutely nothing. Well, I'm graduating from Pacific University, and I'm going to now hold two master's degrees, and already I'm starting to feel that sense of despair that comes from searching for an elusive job. Granted, I have one job interview lined up for the end of this month in Wyoming, but the schools I really wanted haven't contacted me, and the whole feeling just leaves me feeling worse and worse each day. There's a constant state of anxiety when you have no idea how you're going to be able to survive once school is finished, and it just continues to build with each day that finding a job becomes that much more frustrating. Even the jobs I've applied of which I am completely qualified haven't even given me the time of day. With this whole spring break week off from the daily school grind, I kind of thought one of these jobs would contact me, but nothing.

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Ashley Alexandra Dupre: The sob story of prostitution

Well, they identified the call girl that brought down Governor Spitzer of New York. And while I generally read The New York Times, I have to admit they went overboard trying to make Ashley Alexandra Dupre (Kristen) the "victim" in this situation. She was a "$1000 an hour" hooker (in an establishment where they apparently have hookers working up to $4,300 an hour (I guess they wear party hats...I wouldn't know; I don't get out often). Now, they've tried to "humanize" her so that people will feel sorry for her because this big bad scandal has happened to her and it has interrupted her normal plan to bring peace to stuffed koala bears everywhere, or whatever it is she was planning with her myspace music career that will probably benefit from this rather than be hurt.

It's this sort of thing that leaves one wondering, why is it so necessary to give us the sob story of the poor little girl who is down on her luck (charging $4300 to have sex with a governor and knowing full well exactly what she was doing). And why should we really care?

Yeah, it bothers me that yet another girl got herself into this lifestyle. I used to see this CONSTANTLY at San Francisco State University when girls I knew would study feminist theory, convinced they were going to change the attitudes of men around the world, and then you'd find out they were paying their way through school by stripping at Mitchell Brothers in San Francisco or at one of the many other "fine" establishments that involve young, attractive women sitting on the laps of total strangers and getting them off. During one year, I discovered that of my female friends at SFSU, three were strippers at local sex clubs, two were professional dominatrices, one was a professional sex submissive, and two were straight out prostitutes (they preferred "call girls", which made them sound more respectable). Twice, I was called as their "one phone call" in the same week.

Kind of makes you wonder. Well, at least it makes me wonder.

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The Democrats are in a bit of a bind

When the Democrats decided to punish Florida and Michigan for holding their primaries early, I don't think too many people suspected that the joke would end up being on the Democrats themselves. Over the last few days, I've been reading some interesting analysis by VERY BIASED people on both the Obama and Clinton sides. One was an article in the Sunday Sacramento Bee, in which an opinion column from the Washington Post argued that Hillary really is in the front (but does so by including Florida and Michigan as "wins" for Hillary, even though the election was not sanctioned and no one BUT Hillary was on the ballot). Other arguments indicate that Michigan and Florida need to be "do overs", which is about the only way the Obama camp will accept the situation. In reality, three things can happen here:

1. Michigan and Florida are ignored because they broke primary rules. In my opinion, and only my opinion, this is what they should do because Michigan and Florida DID break the rules, KNOWING there would be consequences. The concern from the Democrat Party is that disenfranchising these two states might cause those two states to not contribute strongly in the main election. If so, that's just the way it should be. If Michigan and Florida want to be spoilers because they couldn't be deciders, then they really don't deserve to be of impact in the first place.

2. Count the votes for Hillary. This is just wrong on so many levels. The whole argument is one of the reasons why I really have a lot of disdain for Clinton these days. KNOWING that Michigan and Florida were supposed to be off limits, she's now arguing that she really won those states, even though Obama wasn't on the ballot because of the early primary problem. It's amazing this woman would go through this sort of behavior, muddying the entire party with her desire to be president.

3. A "do over". Well, this is what the Obama camp would want, especially if there are caucuses involved, because he does well in that atmosphere. But to be honest, he doesn't deserve a Florida and Michigan win either because Florida and Michigan really shouldn't be counted. They played with fire and got burn. They can't then decide to pretend the fire never happened after it burned down the fire department.

So, it will be interesting to see what will happen next. Clinton and Obama are doing a great job of destroying a party that really, really needs to be united to take on the Republicans. It's like they actually believe the Republicans are going to just sit this one out, instead of fight tooth and nail for the presidency under McCain. Without a united party, the Democrats may lose what could have been an easy victory. This is the same boat they found themselves in with Kerry, except they didn't even suspect the Republicans were going to hit them from all sides until it happened. Now that they know this is most likely going to happen, it seems sad that they're going to just sit back, destroy their own party and then let it all happen again.

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Foreign Service Officer's Test and ending friendships

I took the Foreign Service Officer's Test for the State Department today. It was not a very difficult exam, although there are a lot of questions that cause one to have to think hard, especially if it's some historical event or economic theory that one does not remember. In all, the test did not take me that long to complete, but it's one of those that leaves you exhausted after you finish it.

I sent off three of my writing works to the Stockton Arts Commission today after I returned home. It's the same contest I won last year with my short story romance, "Buried Memories". I sent a short story called "Simple Girl", about a young woman everyone considers "simple" but ends up being the smartest person in town; it's more detailed than that, but that's the "simple" version of it. I also sent an article I wrote called "Stealing Humanity", and a poem I wrote called "Sleeping America." We'll see what happens.

Had a weird verbal altercation with a friend this evening that just kept pissing me off in the sanctimonious way he kept responding in our conversation. It was one of those "I can never be wrong, so I'm going to fight for each word of a sentence, even though it serves no purpose but piss off the other person" so I kicked him out of my house. If he needs to be "right", he can be "right" all the time he wants. It just won't be as my friend any more.

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First college interview

I received my first interview request today for Casper College in Wyoming. We set it up for March 27th. There appears to be one other person they are considering for the communication/Director of Forensics job.

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