My last unofficial day at work

Today was probably the worst day of work I've had in a long time. Yesterday was great. Yesterday was the two classes with the debate kids, and like I said before, I really like these kids. We had a pretty good set of debates. There was one small problem, however. The previous week, one of the girls accidentally broke the handle off of the door where we hold the class, so you basically can't shut the door unless someone is inside the room. Well, of course, fate struck and the kids were outside of the room when one of them accidentally shut the door, locking all of their stuff inside. So, after I realized that there was no other way to get into the room, I had to do what I was trying to avoid, and that's break into the classroom using my skills at lock picking, one of the few skills that I tend not to bring up in public too often, even though it was taught to me by the government when I did what I used to do for the military. Anyway, I did it when one of the girls wasn't watching, and once I slipped into the classroom, I thought I got away with it, but she had actually seen everything and was so excited that her teacher could pick a lock REALLY FAST that she had to tell everyone. Well, I just said the government trained me and leave it at that. Of course, try telling something like that to kids.

Anyway, fast-forward a day and this was a new set of classes that I went in to teach. I was mostly tempted to just skip teaching, but to be honest, my apartment was roasting around that time, and my sole reason for going into work was because I was about to faint from heatstroke. Anyway, once at school, I listened to the new girl talking about how she's nervous about staying because she realizes the school is definitely not doing well and is probably going under.

It turns out there was some information in this conversation because I found out that she used to work for the guy that is now the big name in our school, some thirty-five or so year old Korean guy who "graduated from Harvard" who has been spending his entire life charging young mothers of young kids money to hear his motivational speeches about how he got accepted to Harvard. Granted, he hasn't done anything since Harvard, other than have motivational speeches, but that's his big schtick. Anyway, it turns out that the girl I'm working with once worked for this guy in the past. Turns out, he pays as well as the school does. He owes her a lot of money, and he "promised" to pay her, yet never got around to doing so. I'm starting to think that this kind of thing runs in this particular circle of school management.

So, I taught the first class, which was mainly one 6th grade student who is pretty smart and always interesting to communicate with. I like him, so that was okay. The second class is the class from Hell, which is with a bunch of kids that have no concern for learning and want to play games all day long. They yell and scream, and they started today's class by calling me all sorts of Korean insults, laughing because they were convinced I had no idea what they were saying. Then they'd pull the typical 10 year old tactic of "teacher, do you know what she say?" And after ten thousand renditions of that, imagine how fun that class was starting to be.

So, I just stood in front of them and let them go on. And on. And on. About half an hour into the class, they started trying to get me to actually start the lesson because when your teacher is standing in front of the room, leaning against the white board, just staring, it starts to get a bit uncomfortable. So I continued just standing there. They then found their page where they remembered we were and asked to start the class. I began the lesson, and immediately after, almost on cue, they started going nuts again. So, I stopped and said nothing. And just stared at them.

Then they started the name calling routine again. I looked at my watch and said: "Class is finished for today." And then I walked out. I said goodbye to the other two teachers (the young girl I've talked about here, and some guy I've never seen before), and then left. I told the secretary, who I've known the longest that she's probably not going to see me again, that I'm going to be flying Wednesday. She asked me if I wanted to talk to the big boss. I said no. The last time I talked to her, she promised me AGAIN that she was going to pay me on a certain date (the fifth time now), and I had no desire to go through another session of that. So, I said no and wished her well. She told me she was probably going to be quitting on Friday.

Then I went home and made myself some eggs for dinner. Not really a dinner kind of meal, but I wasn't feeling like having the usual kind of thing. It means I have nothing for breakfast tomorrow, but that's tomorrow, and I'll face down that demon when she comes.

Stumble It!

The Other Victims in this Human Drama

Thought I would take a step back from complaining about the bad job and talk about another variable that is taking place at work that doesn't actually affect me, but is right there in front of me. What I'm talking about is some of the other people who work with me who are now finding themselves as potential victims in this problematic situation. It's bad enough that I haven't been paid in quite some time, but I'm not the only one. Others have been working pretty long, too, and they're also in a position that isn't very tenable.

Well, a new girl started working just last week, and she's a sweet, innocent-appearing, Christian, Korean girl who seems like a very friendly person. I've had a few conversations with her, and she's only now starting to realize that things aren't as solid as she first imagined them. I could see her trying to put into words her concerns, while at the same time trying to verbally convince herself that things won't be that bad. When she would ask me what I thought, I avoided becoming the voice of dread and told her that perhaps she should talk to one of the Korean teachers, another woman who has been with the company for a few months. I said that perhaps she can give her a better perspective of how things are going, because I really didn't want to have her coming away from a conversation with me and my negativity, feeling even worse for the effort.

This is the kind of girl who is very trusting, and she's hoping very much that things will work out. At the same time, the manager (not the owner) is about to quit as well, because she hasn't been paid in a very long time. The main secretary is about to jump ship right behind her. The whole place is imploding on itself, and it's sad to see anyone else swept up in the disaster that is this place.

But I feel really bad about this new girl, mainly because she seems so nice, and she's in a precarious situation where she probably needs to do something else. She told me that she came from a job where the previous boss told her that the ESL community is small, and that she shouldn't make waves (she may have not been paid completely at that job either) or she might find herself unable to ever find a job.

I find it truly sad that this industry allows this sort of behavior to take place and reinforces it through traditional feedback processing. I used to complain that I am stuck in this job because I'm legally not allowed to take another job in Korea, but these other teachers are just as stuck, because if they take another job, because they're allowed to by law, the industry itself punishes them for making waves and not just sticking it out until the boss decided he or she might be willing to pay a salary.

The manager asked me today if I'm going to be working on Sunday, realizing I'm probably going to be out of the country almost immediately because of this mess, and I said I would be there. She asked me why, as she couldn't see why I would loyally come in when I know I won't get paid. Well, on Sunday I teach debate to two groups of young kids who really like doing it. The classes are never a chore, and they're always interesting. Otherwise, I'd probably stay in a hotel near the airport and never teach another class here again. It's not because I'm being loyal or anything like that. I just like these kids, and I figure I'll at least give them one last debate class with me before I leave.

Stumble It!

Alabama Police Officers on firing line over beating after high speed chase

CNN's story is here. Much of the press in addition to CNN's coverage all seems to be about how police officers went over the line and beat a suspect who was unconscious at the time. Not surprisingly, this kind of story is common, and almost always the press treats it the same way: Shocked horror that police officers could be so callous and cruel in their actions to a citizen.

Yet, something always seems to be missing from the coverage. And I don't mean the opposite reaction, which is usually "the suspect had it coming because he/she should not have been resisting police like that" or something similar. And then the accusations go back and forth as both sides try to leverage some kind of higher moral ground over the other. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something different that is missing.

And that's variable context. What I mean is other variables that aren't being considered in the bigger picture so that the issue doesn't always have to fall into the common camps of disagreement over a story like this one. I mean, it's a common issue, and it happens all of the time. Yet, the arguments wage almost on autopilot, as if the details aren't necessary. The argument is all that is required.

That's where I disagree. If we backtrack to a couple of other incidents, like an obscure one in Clay County of Missouri where a Kearney deputy was caught on camera beating a DUI suspect who led the deputy on a high speed chase. Does this incident sound familiar? It should if you just observed the Birmingham one that prompted this article.

Well, let's go back to a famous one, which is the Rodney King beating. We should all remember that incident where Rodney King was chased by a husband and wife Highway Patrol team that led to a brutal beating that was only discovered because a bystander happened to catch it all on film. This led to a huge riot after the exoneration of the officers by a jury of their peers. This also led to the infamous exclaim by Rodney King during the riot when he questioned, "People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along?"

The reason I mention these incidents is not to rehash the whole idea of police brutality or suspect culpability but to point out the common variable in all of these circumstances. One variable seems to be a DUI factor, although the latest case in Birmingham is more of a drug involvement case rather than DUI involvement. This leaves one very important variable that is rarely discussed and that's the concept of excitation transfer theory.

Excitation transfer theory is one of those simple to understand communication/psychology concepts that occurs when someone has sustained some type of emotional impetus that remains in the person's body long enough to transfer over to the next emotional state the person finds himself/herself in. In the cases of a car chase, the excitation is the chase itself, where adrenalin rises, causing the person to become excited and agitated. Then when the suspect is caught, the excitation is still there, so it gets transferred to other actions, and quite often those other actions happen to emerge as a continuous beating.

A person in an emotionally detached manner would arrive at the apprehension state with faculties at full, yet an excited person would arrive ready to utilize this extra adrenalin that has been building up for actual use. And therefore, the beating occurs.

What is important here is that we in science already understand the condition a police officer is in at this point of the altercation, yet we never seem to do anything about it. A couple of years ago, the Chicago Police Department announced they were going to put tighter limits on police car chases. Unfortunately, public opinion has practically ended that from happening because it makes a police agency look weak if it announces it is going to let criminals go free rather than chase them.

The problem is that we have a no win situation because police officers are tasked with the obligation of getting the job done, but in order to do so, we put them into a situation that requires they subject themselves to an influence that leaves them vulnerable to natural passions. So what is the answer to this problem?

Well, better training is always used as the throw away response, but it is actually a viable answer. If police officers can be trained to recognize this excitation impulse within themselves, perhaps they might curtail it before it becomes an actual problem in the field. It might also help other officers recognize it in their fellow officers to keep them from making critical mistakes that might jeopardize careers and threaten the lives of citizens.

Other alternatives are those that Chicago was starting to recognize. They realized that there was a problem occurring, and it was more than just how police responded. Quite often, these car chases lead to accidents and death of officers, suspects and innocent civilians. None of those are ever to be desired by a police agency that is working in the best interests of everyone involved.

What does need to be done is an elimination of the usual suspects response that we always seem to get. There are more problems than the common responses, and unfortunately as long as these types of incidents yield only stereotypical responses, the problem will never go away, and we will continue to have to deal with the ramifications over and over again.

Stumble It!

Discovering where I stand in the grand scheme of things in Korea

I'm about to leave Korea. Things haven't worked out well here. I haven't been paid in so long that I don't remember when I was last paid. Well, I'll be leaving here next week, and I kept that open, thinking that all they had to do was try to catch up on my pay, and I'd stick it out. Well, in the grand scheme of things here, that's admitting I'm spineless, and therefore, leaves me open to further complications.

Let me explain. You see, I discovered through a conversation with a Korean teacher who was privy to a conversation with the big boss and her assistant manager where the big boss felt that she did not have to pay me because she didn't believe I had enough money to afford a plane ticket to leave. Yeah, I'm not kidding. The thought process she was using was that I'm helpless, stuck in Korea, and therefore there's no hurry to actually pay me. So, just because pay is several months behind is not a problem. The wayguk (foreigner) isn't going to leave because he has no way to leaving. Therefore, we can treat him as unfairly as we desire.

If this was happening back in the states, I'd quit immediately, find a new job and then move on from there. But I don't have that luxury here because I'm in a country across an ocean from my home. I don't even have the luxury of being able to claim my apartment as mine (it's "owned" by the boss who can probably kick me out if we ever come at odds with each other; I've heard of stories of people having to vacate their apartments in minutes, and sometimes having the doors locked on them with all of their stuff still inside).

So, when people ask me why I'm leaving, I would point at this complete lack of respect I've been receiving here from this job. Yeah, I could continue to work for free, but what person in his right mind would continue to do that. I mean, I'm as gullible as the next guy, but there comes a time when gullibility turns into exploitation. I'm a bit past that point.

Stumble It!

Some people just aren't born to teach very young children

Most people know my job has been going downhill for some time now. I won't go into the specifics again (it's all over my blog if you really want to read it, but just leave it at the fact that I'm not getting paid, and we're probably good to go), but yesterday definitely was a true nadir in my Korean teaching experiences.

First off, I'm really here to teach debate, and I have a solid group of students who participate on those days that I teach it (Saturday and Sunday). However, during the week, I've been required to teach English classes to fill time. Mostly, I've been teaching novel reading classes to students and every now and then a social studies class. It hasn't been that bad, but it hasn't been great either.

Well, we ended up with a new manager the other day, and she changed the curriculum completely. Part of the problem of being me here is that the mothers of these kids keep requesting me to teach classes (it may be because they like my teaching; it may be because they want the Caucasian guy teaching their Korean kids; or whatever). So, this new manager decided that I should be teaching reading, dictation and grammar instead of the usual novel classes. Well, the reading isn't that bad, and the grammar is pretty straightforward. But the class for dictation is a class of four students who are EXTREMELY young. Think fresh out of kindergarten and you get the age group. Think less mature than kindergarten and you get the mentality. So, I'm supposed to teach dictation to a group of kids that have no intentions of listening AT ALL. I ended up spending the last half hour of class fending off screaming kids yelling "We want ice cream!". Needless to say, I went home after work with my nerves so frayed that I don't think I will ever teach kids that age again, especially in a language they mostly don't understand.

That's what it's like to teach here on an almost constant basis. The kids don't want to learn; they're being forced into evening classes by their parents who want them to max the English portions of the TOEFL tests that they have to take in order to get into good schools YEARS from now. So the kids don't see a reason why they should be there, and they hold it personally against the teachers who are trying to teach them. And then to top it off, you have the mothers who have no teaching experience whatsoever constantly telling the teachers how they want the classes to be taught. Fortunately, I don't have to run into this part of the equation (the Korean teachers do, however), but there's always that sense that everything you do is being watched. All of the classes are on CCTV, so the parents often sit in the lobby watching the classes on the main computer, criticizing each teaching moment as it takes place.

That's the kind of atmosphere that I've been living in for the last 7 months or so. Now add the variable of "no pay at all" and you might understand why I'm heading to a major clash with this job.

Stumble It!

Discovering Who Your True Friends Are & the Use of Punctuated Equilibrium to Determine One's True Motivations

Most people who follow my research areas know this about me, but I tend to be much more interested in why individuals do things than in why groups of people do things. To me, history is not about how groups interact or act, but in how motivations push specific individuals to do the things they do. In other words, rather than try to figure out why the majority of people might have thought one way or another during the Moscow uprisings of 1991, I look at the influential people who swayed large groups of people so that we can see what that individual's actions did to move the crowd. Even more important to me is what was done by specific individuals that history does not record. So, rather than focus on the great speakers that swayed the founding fathers to do what they did, I look into the Tory speakers and writers who kept people from making the resistance unanimous. It may seem like common sense, but we don't study things that way other than as some kind of post-modernist approach to studying the status quo. I'm interested in it for the long term, to see how those individualists might be projected on future conflicts to see what might cause one rebellion to win while another to fail, instead of leaving them stuck in their own little footprint in time.

But I'm getting ahead of myself with this post. What I wanted to talk about is a symptom that I often study in social science that I also have started to observe in every day life. Right now, I'm having some real problems in Korea. Therefore, I started to turn to old friends who I have helped out in the past, figuring that the whole definition of friendship is that it is a person you can count on in a crisis. What I am discovering is that friendship is very situationally dependent. Some people I have helped out at great cost to myself in the past I recently contacted, asking for some assistance when needing to return home, and I was actually shocked at apprehensive they were to offer assistance of their own. One friend, in particular, is someone I have helped out in numerous situations where he has called me up and asked for assistance. Without a second thought, I was always willing to lend a helping hand, even canceling some of my own plans to help him out at the last minute. Imagine my susprise when I was asking him to help me figure out how to get back to the states with as little trouble as possible. I found the hesitation to be quite interesting, and the rambling while trying to find a way out of the conversation to be even more telling. Finally, I thanked him for his help (which he didn't give) and then I hung up. I realized that some people treat friendships one way, and once the need to reciprocate occurs, they waffle and go the other direction.

This is very much a part of my study of the human condition that I detail so much in my studies. It matches something I have believed for so long now that I constantly argue with people over. But the premise is simple: You can never tell the true nature of another individual until that person is required to step outside of his or her natural element. It was the same thing with combat. The tough talking guy was often the guy who ran the other direction. The quiet, demure one was the one who ended up saving the team.

This is one of the reasons why I find message boards so intriguing. People argue with each other constantly about how they would do one thing or another, but in reality, they have no idea how they would actually respond in any particular situation. They think they would do one thing, but when it comes down to having to make that choice, they rarely do what they expect, but do what they are most likley going to do because their decision-making skills are not based on their thinking process when things are not in crisis mode. Only when they have to face the realization that their actions will yield results that they cannot take back do they become aware of what exactly they would do because then they have to actually do it.

Years ago, I was working for a hotel when we suffered a chemical spill. I was the fourth in charge of a security detail, and the spill took out the director (the number one guy) and the safety director (the number three guy). I had gone down into the spill with them, but I was the only one to realize there was danger because of the first whiff of the chemical, so I grabbed towels from the housekeeping laundry (it was in the laundry room) and started breathing through that. My bosses were not so lucky. The number two person was not on site at the time, so I found myself having to take over a squad of twelve people who had never seen me in action before. Their supervisor, the one who should have been in charge, was in the control room in complete panic mode when I walked in. He couldn't formulate a sentence to give an order to any of his security officers, so I asked the dispatcher if there were any calls that were behind and not part of the crisis, to which there were a few, so I assigned the supervisor to those and took him out of the command loop. From there, I stated issuing orders to everyone to start doing what needed to be done. In about ten minutes, the director of Property Operations (Engineering) realized that Security was actually starting to lock down the system, so he came running into where I was to start coordinating larger events, realizing that we now had a command area where this could be done. In about fifteen minutes, we had saved another five employees who were trapped in the subbasement where the chemical spill took place (it turned out we had to go on a suicide run to the basement where all of the gas masks were stored in Engineering). In the end, we saved a lot of people that day, and what I found interesting was the after effects of the event. The second in command, the one who was not there, started claiming that she had done all of the actions that I did, because no one but me and a few other select people knew what had really happened. I didn't care but knew she was the kind of person to try to take credit for something she didn't do. Anyway, she would have succeeded but the general manager was questioning her and thanking her for her smart thinking in front of the Director of Property Operations who just lost it right then and there, claiming she was never there and that it was all taken care of by Security's investigator, me. Up until that time, the general manager didn't even know who I was. He knew who I was after that.

The point is: People all responded in different ways that were expected. Some of the security officers realized I was in charge and taking care of the situation so they immediately fel in line and started doing everything I said. In moments, I knew who I could count on and who I couldn't. The supervisor I mentioned was a nice guy, but he was not the kind of person who knew how to handle a crisis situation. Unfortunately, he remained in that job for a long time and there were many situations where he was the wrong person to show up at the right time, but those are other stories and for another time.

Stumble It!

The Ongoing Problem with my Job in Korea & Why I'm Leaving

I'd heard of it happening to others who are teachers in Korea, but I never actually thought it would happen to me. When I arrived here, I was coming to a place that was recommended by another debate instructor from the USA. Things started okay during the first few months, and then the job started to go downhill. My job was mainly to teach debate on the weekends and then a few English classes during the week. Being a hagwon job (a private school rather than a public school) one of the advantages is that you don't really have a 9 to 5 type of job where you have to stay at the school when you're not teaching, and everything was generally okay. The kids were cool, and on some days it was a lot of fun.

Fast-forward into about the fourth month and that's when things started to go downhill. First off, the school started making a lot of bad decisions business-wise, and students started dropping off. Then more bad decisions. Then some really bad decisions. And then about the fourth month in, we weren't paid. Then a month or so went by, and we still weren't paid. Then a tiny bit of pay was made up, but we were still far behind. Some good teachers quit (the Korean ones). I was the only foreign teacher, which means I don't have the luxury of quitting because my visa is controlled by the school itself. So I couldn't quit. So I watched as everyone else quit.

Into the sixth month, the boss sold the school to someone else. Pay still hasn't been up to date. Some of us receive a bit of it, but generally we don't receive all of it. Into the seventh month, I didn't get paid at all. As it is, my pay is now 1 and a half months behind, or actually I'm paid up minus 1.5 of my monthly salary, if that makes any sense.

What makes it worse is that the boss is constantly promising to pay on one day, that day arrives, and then nothing happens. Then you can't get a hold of him. And then when you finally do, he acts like nothing happened and then makes promises of when he might be able to pay, often changing the date by the end of the conversation. Two days ago, he promised to pay me (by some bizarre formula he had calculated) on Friday (today). No pay. Then he was called by the new boss who realized I was pissed, and he promised to pay 1 million won (about 1/3 of the amount he owes me). My account received 500,000 won. In other words, he paid me 1/6 of the amount of money he owed me. There's no word when I'll actually get paid.

The new boss decided out of the blue that she doesn't like paying on the 10th, so she's going to be paying on the 20th, but not THIS 20th because she thinks the last month is owed by the previous boss, so she says she'll pay me my next check NEXT month on the 20th. In other words, I will have gone about 3 months without being paid, and then I'll get paid a tiny percentage of the amount I'm supposed to be paid.

So, if anyone wants to know why I've decided to just cut and run, that's why. Unless something drastic happens here, I'm going to take the few dollars I have and just come home to the United States and pretend that Korea never happened. I'm so sick and tired of dealing with this crap on a nonstop basis. It would be one thing if I was in love with some Korean girl here, or I loved the food, or something like that. But none of those factors exist.

And the new boss has hired a manager who seems to like speaking to me like a child. Now, in some contexts that might actually be kind of cool, but right now, I'm not into having a mommy as a supervisor. Remember the one advantage about working only when you have classes to teach? She doesn't like that, and she wants me there every hour that the school is open. You know, if things were a lot better in all sorts of other areas with this school, I might be amicable to something like this. But things suck here right now.

The funny thing is that the mothers of a lot of these students keep requesting that their kids have more classes with me. I'm a pretty good teacher and the kids like me. I make classes informative and interesting. But I'm afraid they're going to lose me because of all of this garbage. And if this keeps working as it has, I have all intentions of jumping ship sometime next week, realizing that I'm never going to get paid anyway. Sure, I'll have to suffer when I get home, and I don't know how I'll actually survive it, but I can't take this anymore. At least if I decide to do something stupid and drastic to my life, I'd at least like to be around people who at least understand me when I decide to do it. Yes, Golden Gate Bridge, I'm thinking of you right now in your big red beauty. Okay, I'm not there yet, but at least I'd like the option of going out someplace close to where I can buy a Wendy's cheeseburger first.

Stumble It!

Microsoft vs. Apple: A Conflict Seen Through Political Exhaustion Theory

If you own a television and live in the United States, you've no doubt seen the numerous commercials that have come out from Apple that show the cool Apple guy who says "Hi, I'm a Mac" and the nerdy, plump guy who calls himself a "PC". This was a series of ads that Apple designed to show that Macs are cooler than PCs, and to convince people that PCs are too hard for the average user to understand, so go ahead and buy a Mac.

Well, this seems to have been causing a dent in Microsoft's bottom line, so they started to run a series of ads that use the exact same kind of rhetoric in hopes of countering Apple's continuous successes with this campaign. To the tech crowd, often the response has been "it's about time" to "how desperate". What is interesting is that no one has actually looked at the long term effects of this kind of rhetorical battle.

Now, I've done some work on narratives and counter-narratives, so if dealt with in just that capacity, it would seem that whichever side winds up with the stronger narrative ends up being the winner of the conflict. However, there is one further variable that needs to be discussed, and there's a rich literature already done on it. I brought it up in a conversation the other day, and it made me realize that people are only capable of accepting what's immediately in front of their faces; thinking through things strategically rather than tactically is something people do not do (we look for immediate results, not long term effects).

Well, political exhaustion is something no one ever seems to discuss outside of political elections. I think it's actually the problem that's being seen here, but no one wants to recognize it because there's no "political" situation that they can match it to. Therefore, they don't make the connection.

Political exhaustion posits the very simple idea that if attack ads continue to wage during a campaign, you end up with fewer people participating in voting. So, the other side doesn't gain more votes, but the side that was attacked loses votes, so fewer and fewer people participate.

Well, it might not come as a surprise to people, but Microsoft was starting to lose business due to the Apple attacks, and thus decided to turn the tide by starting their own attack ads. Well, guess what? In February, Apple's sales dropped 16 percent, meaning that Microsoft's attack ads were doing exactly what political attack ads do. In other words, people aren't deciding between Macs and PCs because of the ads; they're deciding against both Macs and PCs because of the ads. The only reason people are continuing to buy PCs and Macs are because they aren't influenced by the ads at all, they are so in need of a computer that they'll forgo the argumentation and just buy one anyway, or other factors besides wanting to buy one or the other. All that these attack ads have succeeded in doing is convincing people NOT to buy the other product. But because both sides are now in full gear (Apple responded with their own response to Microsoft, causing the next round of Microsoft ads), we're guaranteed to see continuous, diminishing returns.

This would be a really good time to be a third option.

Stumble It!

The heater dial

Stumble It!

Dom DeLuise: Wonderful actor, comedian, and childhood friend

Dom DeLuise died at 75 of cancer. This is horrible to hear. When I was a little kid, my best friend and I used to play hide n seek in the Broadway, a department store in Santa Monica. We used to run into Dom all the time. It got to the point where he saw us so much that he used to sit with us at McDonald's and tell us stories. One day, my mom and I were at Carl's Jr and she saw Dom, and said, "Look there's Dom DeLuise, the guy in those movies with Burt Reynolds." Dom's face lit up, and he said: "Duane! Come join me!" So my mom and I joined him and ate dinner. My mom was so overwhelmed that we were sitting at the table with someone so famous. He was also extremely charming. I remember him saying, when he first saw us: "Duane, this must be your lovely mother. Please join me." My mom hit me after he left, saying, "why didn't you tell me you knew Dom DeLuise?"

He will truly be missed.

Stumble It!

Fallout 3: A computer game looked at from the perspective of good writing

I've been spending the last week playing a game called Fallout 3 on the PC. Now, this might be perceived as a "geek" post, because I'm talking about a computer game here, but that's not what I wanted this to be. Instead, I want to talk about the writing in this game, because while I've read a lot of books in my time, I have yet to experience the writing that you find in a game of this magnitude.

For starters, the game is a sequel to a series of post-apocalyptic games called Fallout, which is also a loose sequel to a very old 4 color game called Wasteland. Like the very first Wasteland, the premise is that there was a nuclear war, and you are leaving one of the vaults where people escaped to, and you are seeing the new world for the first time. It's a dangerous, horrible place filled with tons of radiation, and the adventure you have is completely unique to you. There is always a strong mission within the story itself, but you're free to do whatever you want to do, and you don't even have to solve the original quest itself if you don't want to. Or you can. The choice is up to you.

Fallout 1 and 2 are considered amongst the greats of roleplaying games (rpgs) in computer gaming history. The story is almost identical, although in the sequel (Fallout 2) you play the descendant of the original vault dweller who leaves into the wasteland to explore. Fallout 3, well, it's like they went back and redid the whole story from scratch, and it's a wonderful adventure because of it. The whole thing plays like it's brand new, and the interface is a lot like a first person shooter, although a better comparison would be to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which is not surprising because Bethesda is the company that did Oblivion, and the company that did Fallout 3.

But I wanted to talk about the writing. One of the things that makes Fallout 3 unique is that the story and the way the story is told is just magnificent. This isn't some "look, there's a bad guy, aim your weapon and kill him" kind of game. Everything you do has moral choices, and even the way you go about doing things has so much richness behind it. In the story, you are "born" to a father who allows you to choose what your character is going to be like, and you actually grow up with that father leading you through some of your most important events in your childhood, up to the point where he escapes from the vault and leaves you to follow after him. The way this is done is told so well.

You have a portable device that you use as your inventory and character screen, and it also acts as your way of handling data within the game. It's where you first receive a radio signal from something called GNR. Then you receive another radio signal from something called the Enclave, which is the successor of what used to be the United States Government. Then as the game goes on, you receive other radio signals, including a really stereotypical Chinese broadcast that keeps telling you to stop doing the dirty deeds for those capitalist pigs that are sending you to your deaths in the war against China.

What's really cool is the uniqueness of those radio signals. GNR is run by Three Dog, and he's the coolest dude in the capital wasteland. You can eventually meet him, and he's just as cool in person as well. And his news is timely and up to date. It's like listening to a regular radio station. Or you can change the signal to the Enclave and listen to patriotic reports and music from President Eden. That's just a scratch on the surface of the radio stuff alone.

And that has little to do with the whole story itself because you have so much land to explore, and almost every little place you go to has some huge back story to it that you can delve into. Or not. The first city I went to was called Megaton, named after an unexploded nuclear missile that crashed into the center of the town. It is surrounded by the Children of the Atom, who worship the Atomic Bomb. The rest of the city isn't all that sane either as their sheriff is some guy in a cowboy hat who wants to instill "frontier justice".

There is so much going on in this game that I am in awe of the greatness of the writing. You turn a corner, and then suddenly there's a story of something you hadn't expected before. The whole adventure takes place in Washington, DC, so you can imagine the different types of stories that can occur. The time line is a little different as well, as the universe of Fallout 3 kind of veers off from ours after World War II, leading into some Twilight Zone-ish kind of world where things are just "different".

I don't play a lot of computer games anymore, mainly because I find them to be really redundant and boring. This game, however, redefines what computer games should be because it put the story back into the world and never compromised. There's a reason it's being hailed as one of the best games ever made.

If I ever get involved in computer game creation again, it will be for this type of game because this is how storytelling should be.

Stumble It!