The Oak and the Blade of Grass

There is an interesting anecdote I heard today that I wish to remember and relay as it really has stuck in my mind of late.

In a clear but verdant plain stood a gigantic oak tree. It was the only feature on an otherwise unremarkable landscape; though the oak was admist a field of lush grass,no other animals or plants were about.

One day a terrible storm came in - a cyclone of epic proportions. The winds blew a titanic gale and the oak was unrelenting; it refused to bend to the will of the wind. Few things in the world can withstand the unlimited power of the elements and the oak was no exception. The tree was uprooted, the branches snapped, the leaves stripped and the bough broken. The grass of the field was flexible and pliant; when the storm attacked the land the grass gracefully bowed and was spared the wrath of the tempest.

The purpose of the story is obviously to illustrate the benefits of flexibility and humility when faced with catastrophe. Rigidity and pride will do you little good against an implaccable foe.

This isn't what interested me about the story however. What fascinated me was the alternative perspective that was offered at the conclusion of the tale - that it was better to be the giant oak than the grass. That it was better to leave this world as a mighty tree; the source of pride and glory of the land, than to live on as some pathetic nameless blade of grass. Why not go out with style and dignity rather than be forgotten and unremarkable?

God isn't dead, he's just bored

The nature of God says that he's omniscient - he knows everything that can and will happen ever.

I've been thinking about this for a while and if God exists and is omniscient, he must be bored stupid. If you have freewill but cannot exercise it, you must feel completely trapped or entirely bored.

So I imagined for a moment that I knew everything and could do anything I wanted (except for throwing away my powers; making myself less than I am) the inevitable place I come to is one of desperation and futility. I know everything that could be, that is, that was. There is no imagination, no creativity to be had, and ultimately, nothing to do.

God was bored.

After creating all, there was nothing left to do. Sure he may have had some fun making the fjords, and definitely had himself a good laugh when he made the platypus, but what is there to do after that? The most fantastic idea then hit him: endow some of the more cunning monkeys with a freewill similiar to that of his own. Without the omnipotent and absolute powers of God, a magnificient experiment was born with wildly unpredictable outcomes: what would the simians do with their powers of reasoning?

I don't think God "knows" everything, in the sense that there is nothing left to experience. If man was truly created in God's image, it was done in order to allow God to experience life from another perspective.

And then something happened that God was not expecting; through knowledge of man he felt something that he could not have fathomed beforehand: wonder. The sublime pleasure of something truly transcendental whenever man looked to the stars or viewed an aurora.

Whether or not God gave mankind meaning to their lives, it seems to me that mankind was made to give meaning to God's. There's only so long that you can laugh at the discomfortiture of whales when they are harassed by packs of mischievous dolphins. It's a long time, but still, not forever.

Chaotic neutral

I think I'm a bad man. Not malicious or mean-spirited but there's definitely something that's gone wrong with my set of morals. This revelation struck me today as I was reading the news, but then was somewhat assuaged by my satisfaction with my new alignment modifier of Chaotic Neutral.

The article I read was about a teenage guy who died because he accidentally fell off the roof of a seven-story carpark. Why am I bad? It's because when I read it my immediate and uncontrolled reaction was of amusement rather than a more compassionate feeling of regret or sadness.

The reason for my misguided mirth was the reason why this guy died - he had had a few drinks and was texting instead of looking where he was going. And it's not that there were no guard railst; that it was a tragic but negligent accident. There was a guard rail, it wasn't negligent on the part of the architect and there was no one else to  blame but his own dumb self.

Tragic? Hardly. I often say that this kind of this is natural selection in action; pure unadulterated Darwinism. A guy literally too stupid to live caused his own death.

However this isn't the issue. The problem is my revelry in the fatal misfortunes of someone I don't know and never would care about. I've run into troubles before with people because of this attitude; on occasion it has even jeopardized my job. Normally these situations are more complicated than the one issue so I've never really thought too carefully about it until today.



Whenever I'm presented with an abstract situation and black comedy I fully enjoy it; I never actually have schaudenfreude when there's someone in front of me who is suffering. Still, it doesn't bode well for my general moral standing. I do wonder whether others actually feel moral outrage at my lack of compassion or just pretend because it's expected someone calls me out of this.

Thus I must concede that my alignment now must move from Chaotic Good to Chaotic Neutral. Not good, not evil, little regard for the law but with a code of ethics. Like Captain Jack Sparrow or Dinobot from Beast Wars - a private agenda and no real allegiance, and hedonistic one way or the other.

Game Review: Pokemon Soulsilver

In anticipation of the upcoming Pokemon White I've been playing Soulsilver fairly religiously. There is a certain satisfaction to be gained by having a perfectly and carefully raised Dragonite laying waste to all my opponents like a vengeful god on insolent villagers.

The gameplay in this game is virtually identical to all of its predecessors, minus a few graphical upgrades. The battle animations look a little better but it still looks like every pokemon has an epileptic fit before chundering all over the unsuspecting foe.

Soulsilver is to Silver what FireRed is to Red; upgraded, prettier, and largely a complete waste of time as it's the same damn game! The addition of the controlling stylus does nothing to improve the gameplay nor does the subtraction of the slot machines make it more wholesome. In it's marvellously absurd wisdom Nintendo decided that gambling avatars made for poor moral examples all while forcing your newly abducted animals to fight and kill for your amusement. In Soulsilver, I beat the divine-protector of the ocean currents into submission and forced it to fly me around the place while it was unconscious. The ethical implications may be somewhat of a wash is all I'm saying.

I have one major gripe with this title, and that is the ridiculous amount of difficulty there is in capturing certain pokemon. I've never liked the stupidly small chance you had to capture the legendaries in the earlier ones - supposedly even after reducing Zapdos to 1 health, confusing it, making it paralyzed and lowering all of its stats as far as they can go and still I only have a 5% chance of catching it with my ultra ball.

All the coolest pokemon require retarded amounts of time and effort to acquire and by that stage, game fatigue has set in and I want to just finish.For example, Lucario is pretty rad being a dark/steel type and looks awesome but requires literally 120 real days AFTER beating the big 4 to capture a Riolu, which then takes like 200 000 steps to evolve through happiness. Mood strikes as being the most contradictory of status requirements, as my personal happiness is inversely proportional to that of my pokemon. Oddly walking around with a level 1 pokemon for days on end makes me crazy with murderous rage rather than entertained.

I think it was a good move to allow for roaming legendaries - makes them difficult to catch without being artificially hard; tactics rather than attrition is required to get them. They still aren't worth getting however as they still have that hair-tearingly frustrating quality of having a 5% catch rate.

There isn't any point in doing the "other" measures of your pokemons' abilities: the dance contest, speed contest and beauty contests seem to be the only reason why you need a stylus and they add nothing to the game. Doing the contests won't improve their stats and won't improve any other battle quality.

Ultimately I have to conclude that it was worth the $70 price tag when I bought it as I'm still playing it and I've poured more than 200+ hours into it. Any game that I'm still play a year after purchase is worth it. Why it makes me spend 175 of those hours walking around with baby pokemon is beyond me though.

Game Review: Halo 1, 2 and 3

Despite fears that I may spoil the rest of this review in the first sentence, the Halo series exemplifies the archetypal standard, or average, first person shooter game.


There are several consistent parts to the series, namely the weapons, the physics and the storyline/characters. These characteristics are really what sets Halo as a true Malcolm in the Middle of FPS'. The weapons are utterly standard - you have the generic battle rifle, the accurate pistol, the noob tube, several rapid fire energy weapons and low-accuracy machine guns. There is also a weapon that can go climb a wall of dicks (the energy rifle, which both refuses to do damage and jams with alarming regularity), and one or two weapons that have a magnificiently visceral quality (the energy sword for swish-swish-stabbery, and the gravity hammer for sheer unmitigated brutality).

The story, I believe, does make sense if you stop to listen to the dialogue but it always happens when you are firing weapons or being otherwise distracted. It's got something to do with a war with lizard-people and their religious fanaticism - they wish to destroy the universe. And there are no anti-semitic implications.


The physics are adequate - there are things you can and can't do but there isn't anything remarkable about it. There aren't any puzzles. The vehicle sections are a little cumbersome - not awful - but in all fairness there aren't any games with good vehicle handling (other than dedicated racing simulators).


In lieu of any kind of coherent ranking system, here are my preferences for the first 3 games.


Lustrous gold: Halo 3
Underrated silver: Halo - Combat Evolved
Shameful bronze: Halo 2

Halo and Halo 3 nearly tie, though 3 wins the race by being less old. 1 hasn't aged as poorly as 2 oddly enough - the graphical upgrade from Halo 1 to Halo 2 was good for its time, but Halo has a much simpler and crisper look.

My thoughts on Halo 2 can be best described this way: I am so glad I only paid $7 for it from a bargain bin. I spent the majority of the game being shot from behind by obnoxious dark creatures in the dark corners of the room. I also generally play my games on max difficulty but the difficulty in Halo 2 goes beyond reason or sanity. You get killed so often that it's more like watching Starship Troopers than playing a game. I like to think the Master Chief becomes a born-again Christian and consequently has learned to turn the other cheek rather than fight back.

It's hard to critique any further because of its sheer averageness. I guess the only thing to keep in mind past that point is that average doesn't mean bad. Getting a C+ is a passing grade, and like most mediocre things there is fun to be had in it if you enjoy it with a few good mates.

Haiku: The Coffee Club

Dammit Coffee Club

Why must you overcharge me?

It's just not worth it

Writing, Art, Pretentiousness

I'm deeply gratified by the fact that I gain great satisfaction from writing fiction in addition to social commentary. Today's post may seem somewhat in the vein of dear diary but there is a point to be had from this introspection.

Several days ago I had a discussion with someone about "The Scream" painting but Edvard Munch, though you'll have to forgive the sheer pretentiousness of that notion. Most would probably recognise it - it looks like a horrifying version of Macauly Culkin doing his scream thing. What we discussed was the fear and inner torment that would prompt someone to create such a work - "The Scream" just happens to be toe-curlingly scary for a mere painting.

No one ever changed the world by being an observer or a historian; art is about self-expression, and this is why artists like Andy Warhol will be seen as footnotes in art history. Warhol's art reflected his theories about society, rather than a conveyance of raw emotion and ideas; which is what I consider to be the true purpose of art. "The Scream" is so powerful because it does communicate the emotions of the artist, and these emotions are deeply profound and unsettling.

I have no skill or ability in fine arts and my skill at writing is still in its infancy, but still, I've stumbled upon my own screamer. Not all artistic creations should be of horror, obviously, but self-realisation is important for everyone. "The Scream" gave a literal face to the anguish in Munch's mind.

The kind of mettle that allows a man to give life to their own personal demons is an admirable quality. I doubt Warhol's demons were portrayed in any soup can.

Travel: Stanthorpe

In something unconventional, the year started off with a trip into southern Queensland. I must say prior to the trip, I experienced some trepidation with the notion of voyaging to farmland country (especially with my carefully concealed and subtle disdain for farming, agrarian lifestyles and "those" people in general. I attempted to rein in these feelings of superiority and try to better relate with my fellow (albeit lesser) man.

As trips go I would definitely recommend travelling during times of severe weather and road construction. A little infinitely-slow crawl through torrential rain and sign-waving road workers.

Stanthorpe is a fairly nice place - full of verdant fields and tasty vineyards. The town is one of the few that I've visited that didn't have a Bates Motel feel; like I was walking into a place where something was terribly wrong and I couldn't put my finger on it until a dude attacks my vulnerable naked flesh in the shower. The citizens are friendly but not too friendly - a relatively proud folk, earned from decades of family farming of exquisite boozes and intoxicants. I can understand that. Aside from Castle Glen (the liquer wholesaler) most establishments have a real sense of class, as opposed to a veneer of class.

Perhaps my dissatisfaction with Castle Glen was with my expectations - I was expecting a castle-shaped brewery filled to the brim with royal liquers, with wenches to serve my whims and a fantastic factory tour with periodic breaks for Oompah Loompah songs. Instead it was little more than a glorified bottle shop with tasting and bottles that were fruity in both appearance and sexual preference.



Wine tasting is something that all people should try at least once in their lives. If they can overcome the inherent pretentiousness of the activity you really start to learn things about how wine is made - while this wouldn't be of much interest in anyone, it is something you don't hear about in school between Shop A and algebra. The shop attendents are more like hosts, taking you on a culinary tour of their products with a level of ascerbity I find both familiar and compelling; it's comforting to know that the Australian countryside has some inhabitants that aren't hicks. It most definitely introduced me to the notion that just because people live in rural areas doesn't mean they have no class; my distaste for bogans is profound but bogans cannot be farmers by definition - bottom feeders that add nothing to society.

Stanthorpe is just the right size - everyone who lives there has a job and has a purpose. It isn't big enough to have unemployment so there isn't any riffraff. If there is one odd observation it is the complete lack of any non-caucasians - almost suspiciously so.

Perhaps poverty, vagrancy and racial diversity were all eradicated by the residents of Stanthorpe eating all the Aboriginals.