Chateau Romani, with a side of Machismo

… how people suddenly stopped caring about Kony and Uganda.

Just sayin’.

Let’s say you have two sons. One is ten years old, the other is 21. The 21 year old lives hours away, maybe even in another province/state, for University. You don’t get to see him a lot, but every other year or so he comes to visit. My tip?

Don’t treat the two sons the same. One is a boy, and one is a man. One of these kids just learned how to ride a bike, just learned his timestables, and still doesn’t know what a vagina is. The other son can legally drive, drink, smoke, sign his own contracts, have sex, gamble, and vote.

One has had his first crush on a girl, saw his teacher outside of class for the first time, had his first sip of beer that you gave him, and actually might get up for school in the morning. The other has had many nights that he can’t remember, has woken up next to a strange woman, has had his heart broken many times, has tattoos, works with his Professors, and knows that he has to take responsibility for his actions.

Don’t treat these two sons the same. While the 21 year old son might be able to discuss politics and philosophy with you, he probably doesn’t want to. If he comes to you with funny drunken stories, or stories about women he’s been with, he wants to bond you with on the same level as a man, not as a father and son, not as mentor and learner, but man to man. To push him away and tell him, “You’re in University to study, not have fun”, is the fastest way to make him lose respect for you as a man.

Every boy [with a good father] grows up idolizing his father. He looks forward to the day he can sit and have a beer with him, he looks forward to the day he can tell his dad, “I met this beautiful girl, and I became a man”, he looks forward to the day when he can sit around the campfire with his father and his father’s friends, and be “One of the guys”. He looks forward to the day his father acknowledges him as a man.

This idolization will be replaced by sad realization when that man finds out his father doesn’t acknowledge him as a man, and rather than laugh and share stories with his son, instead lectures him on life lessons the son has already learned on his own. A man who understands that he alone is responsible for his actions, need not be told to be responsible.

No doubt some of you may have seen the big KONY 2012 thing going around. I know my Facebook is plagued by it, with all my friends running up to me and demanding I watch this amazing documentary by Invisible Children Inc. Suddenly, because of this 30 minute video, all the 20 year old, Canadian University students who complain when they have to get up before noon, are up in arms about the evil atrocities in Uganda, because of this one man.

          No, really. Finish chewing your gourmet food first, though.

See, the funny thing about Facebook Activists is they believe they can make a change by sharing a link on Facebook, and this makes them feel good about themselves. They can look down on people because they’re making a difference! Thing is, IC isn’t exactly a reputable organization. I’ll have a link at the bottom of this, but lemme take a quick excerpt:

the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on supporting African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.

What the bulk of these activists don’t actually do, is research. Someone puts information in a nice video that tells them, “You can be a better person by sharing this!”, and so they do. I bet 99% of people who just heard about Kony didn’t even bother checking secondary and tertiary sources to ensure it wasn’t just all BS. If they bothered to look up the information, they’d realize that the military they support so adamantly, because of this video, partakes in raping and pillaging all the time.

But no, Facebook Activists won’t listen to this, because that means they can’t feel superior. Most people I know who are “YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS VIDEO LIKE AND SHARE IT THIS HAS TO STOP” have never been outside of Canada. Me? I’ve been to war-torn countries. I’m from Cyprus, which in itself was divided in half by war. I’ve seen the results of atrocities, and I can say there’s no way we’re gonna stop any of it by liking a video on Facebook, or by donating to an organization who spends more money on advertisement than what they promote.

Don’t get me wrong, Kony is a bad man and the intentions to do right are there. But you can make a change without sitting at your expensive computer, and suddenly pretending to care about stuff that has been going on for hundreds of years, because a video decides to single out one of many.

http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/

So, a couple friends and I were discussing various University programs the other day, and someone made this comment:

It’s not fair to say that a 90 in Engineering is worth more than a 90 in English. They’re both hard for different reasons!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to undermine Arts degrees. They take a lot of work, and it’s completely viable as a job choice, especially if you love it. But it’s not the same.

Last year, I was doing a Physics major and Math minor, and this year, I’ve switched to a Computer Science major, but I’ve always been a well-rounded student. Decent at everything, great at nothing, if you will. Most of my good friends are doing Engineering, or some sort of hard science, or math. I’ve also got a bunch of friends who are doing English, History, and Business.

And it’s not the same. I have a friend doing Process Engineering, he’s in 7 courses, and has class from 8AM to 6PM with little to no breaks, 4 labs a week, and is writing 10 finals this semester. He’s one of the smartest people I know, he studies all day, and gets mid 80s. He’s great at math, writing, and science, and is generally well-rounded.

Meanwhile, I have a friend doing an English degree. She’s in 4 courses; 3 of which are in-class, and one is online. She’s in class from 1PM to 3PM most days, no labs, and 3 finals. She writes her essays while hanging out with her friends, and gets mid 80s. She’s good at writing, yet completely unable to do basic math such as factoring.

This is a trend among every Engineering major and English major I know.

                                       Bit of a difference.

You’ll have to excuse me if I’m a bit hesitant to say, “Oh yeah, totally means the same thing.” Again, I’m not trying to undermine it; every degree takes work, just different amounts of work. I realize there are people doing English majors who are brilliant at math, or Engineering majors who suck at English, but in a general case, hard science students do a Hell of a lot more work. When I brought this up, the retort I got was:

But an English degree takes so much more creativity, it’s not like math or sciences, where you just plug things into formulas. You’ve gotta be able to think things through.

I get this one a lot, and it’s something a lot of people seem to think. What people don’t realize is that, once you get passed the  basic level math and science courses, it stops being “Plug the given distance into d”. Last year, in my Physics course, I had to derive my own formulas, based on every unique situation, to use in the problem. Computer Science’s very foundation is using computers to solve problems.

If that doesn’t take creativity, I don’t know what does. Sure, English and Business require creativity to come up with ideas and present them, but to say Physics is just “Plugging things into formulas”? To say Math is just “Tossing around some numbers”? To say programming is just “Typing up stuff on a computer”?

                              Shocking. Positively shocking.

http://www.siliconera.com/2011/08/16/dmc-devil-may-cry-dante-is-half-devil-and-half-angel/

What the shit is this. No, seriously, what in God’s name is going on? Is Ninja Theory made up of a bunch of squealing fangirls? The whole “Half-devil half-angel” thing has been rampant in fanfiction for years, and guess what, it’s always been a bad premise that should stay where it deserves, in smut.

                           One is Dante. The other is Edward Cullen.

When they did this to Dante, it was a shock, but I could look passed it. (And yes, I used DMC2 Dante. Despite the game not being that great I retain that DMC2 Dante looked the most badass)

It wasn’t the Dante we knew, mainly because he was a skinny punk, and looked like he would keel over any day now, much less kill anything. Secondly he was smoking, Dante has never smoked, Dante’s the type to shoot a demon in the face and then tell him smoking kills. Thrice, he puts the cig out in a demon’s eye. Dante was never sadistic.

This new Dante is going for the “OMG I’M SO EDGY AND DARK” style, which hey, fanfic writers love! Dante was never “Edgy and dark”. In DMC1, he was care-free and cocky. In DMC2 he was solemn, yet still retained that cockiness. In DMC3 and 4, he was… Kind of all over the place. In more ways than one. But in all of them, he was clearly the good guy; Dante is not an “Anti-hero”, the original creator said he wanted Dante to be the epitome of “Cool”, someone to look up to. Dante is not evil in anyway, that’s the whole fucking point of the games.

Notice how the title is Devil May Cry? Not Devil May Be A Complete and Unrelatable Asshole Because That’s How FanFiction Portrays Him.

Don’t get me wrong, I like anti-heroes. I like Kratos, I like Afro Samurai, I like Renegade Shepard, I like Killy, and I love Riddick. But Dante is not an anti-hero. The whole point of the games are that Dante’s humanity is what makes him so strong, his heart.

Which leads me to the next point, Dante is now half-devil, half-angel. Which defeats the whole purpose of every message in the previous goddamn games. Dante defeats Vergil, Mundus, you name it. All of them were stronger than him, yet how is it Dante comes out on top? Because Dante is part human. Dante has something they all lack, a heart, compassion. Vergil rejected his human side, so even though he was a better swordsman, Dante’s determination came out on top.

But now, he’s not even human, which goes against everything. And sure you could say, “Oh, he can still be compassionate and have all the traits of a human”. But he’s not being compassionate. Again, he clearly tortures a demon. Hardly what I’d call “Embracing the compassionate side”.

But that’s enough of the story, let me draw you to something.

This is a key mechanic in DmC Devil May Cry since Dante can transform the Rebellion into a holy scythe or a devilish axe.

You know what that means! Enemies that are immune to certain styles, AND a “Karma” system! Oh wow that’s so original and totally what I wanted in my Devil May Cry games!

This isn’t Devil May Cry anymore. This is “Hey let’s make a generic action game and slap on ‘Devil May Cry’ to get sales”. This is Fanfiction in video game form.

For some reason, humans are just suckers for being afraid. Scary movies are top-rated, horror games are widely acclaimed, and everybody looks forward to the next deathcore album. Unfortunately, what happens when one isn’t scared by the dark? Or by polygonal gore? Or by tenseness? What are you left with? A mediocre game, 90% of the time.

                            Pennywise is unimpressed by bullshit.

I’ll lay out the most common types of “Horror” games for you, and tell you exactly what’s wrong with them, from the perspective of someone who has yet to be scared by any of these.

Click “Read More” to find out!

Read More

My friends, it has often been said that I like science. My friends, I like science. No, friends, I love science!

I love physics. I love mathematics. I love piles of notebooks. I love integrals, graphs, I love rearranging operations, and questions.

Sciences across fields, in classrooms, in lectures, in space, in frozen tundras, through hallways, in my room, on a bus, I love every question of science that can occur within this Universe.

I love blasting the examples to smithereens with well-placed derivatives that thunder across the lines of the notebook.

My heart leaps with joy whenever a question is tossed high into the air and cut to pieces by well placed calculators.

And there is nothing like a professor using a TI-89 to destroy English papers. And the feeling that comes when an Arts major runs screaming from his blazing beret only to be mowed down by heavy logical algorithms, is such an exquisite feeling.

Like when ranks of undergrads brandish their pens rushing into the exam room. It moves me deep within my heart to watch a freshman stabbing over and over into the bloated chest of a long-overdue exam.

The sight of deserters being strung up from a street lamp is an irresistible pleasure. And there is nothing more arousing, than the sounds made by History majors dropping like flies, screaming in agony as they’re mowed down by ear piercing mathematical proofs!

When a band of pitiful zealots makes their final stands with nothing but small books, only to have their arguments smashed to atoms block by block by quantum mechanics, I’m in ecstasy.

I love it when my mind is ravaged by a Millennium Prize Problem. It’s so sad to see functions and equations that were supposed to be insolvable at all costs, being laid to waste, their integrals and proofs being raped, and killed.

I love to be squashed under the heel of the British and American science machines. The humiliation, as my thoughts crawl around like vermin, ducking the electric flux equations flying overhead.

Gentlemen… All I ask for is science, a science so grand as to make Hell itself tremble. Gentlemen, I ask you as fellow scientists in arms, what is it you really want? Do you wish for further scientific discovery as I do? Do you wish for a merciless, bloody scientific founding? A discovery whose evidence is built with iron, and lightning, and fire? Do you ask for science to sweep in like a tempest, leaving not even ravens to scavenge, from this Earth!?

Very well. Then evidence is what you shall have. We are a clenched fist, ready to strike down all who oppose us, with our mathematical backing. But.. After enduring over half a century wallowing in the darkness, for us, a simple “ordinary” discovery will no longer be sufficient. We need a MASSIVE discovery! A discovery beyond any other that man’s history has never known!

Friends…let’s bring them Carl Sagan.

And yet I still don’t fucking understand Chemistry. Goddamn I hate Chemistry.

Bricky McBrickwall: Hi Socially!

Socially O’Butterfly: Hello Brick!

Bricky McBrickwall: How are you doing today?

Socially O’Butterfly: Pretty good! The weather’s a bit meh, but I’m not letting it bring my mood down. I’m going shopping, you see!

Bricky McBrickwall: Oh. I see.

Socially O’Butterfly: Yeah! I’m going clothes shopping, and then I think I’m gonna go see a movie!

Bricky McBrickwall: Lol.

Socially O’Butterfly: You know any good movies playing?

Bricky McBrickwall: Yes.

Socially O’Butterfly: Oh. What are they?

Bricky McBrickwall: Dunno.

Socially O’Butterfly: …

Bricky McBrickwall: …

This is not how you communicate. That conversation ended pretty quickly. Wanna know why? Because Bricky McBrickwall is what I like to call “Socially Challenged.” When you initiate a conversation with someone, the goal should not be to end it as quickly as possible. In fact, if you’re going to talk to someone, you should make an effort to continue a conversation.

Let’s look at ways that Bricky McBrickwall could have continued the conversation.

Socially O’Butterfly: Yeah! I’m going clothes shopping, and then I think I’m gonna go see a movie!

There are multiple responses Bricky could have given.

1. He could have asked what she was buying.
2. He could have asked what movie she was going to see.
3. He could have suggested a movie to go see.
4. He could have asked if Ms. Socially wanted some company.

From that one line, there are four easy to see responses. But instead, Bricky opts to say, “Lol.”

What the fuck is wrong with you.

How does that propagate a conversation whatsoever? A conversation, in person or over texts, should be between two people. Not you initiating the conversation then expecting Socially O’Butterfly to continue it for your entertainment.

Naw, it don’t work that way. If you’re gonna talk to me, talk to me. Don’t just give me “Lol” and “Yes” then get uppity when I call you on it.

This is me having a conversation with a normal, competent human being.

This is me getting ready to kick your ass when you reply with “Lol”.

So don’t do it.

Tuition per semester: $4000

New, double-dorm room, for one semester: $2000

University text books for one semester: $1000

Cost of a wireless adapter: $60

“House fee”: $30

Cost of a Brita Water Filter, because there`s nothing for water except the bathroom sink: $20

Cost to do one load of laundry: $2.50

Know what the best part about all this is? They’re doing construction riiiight outside my window. Every morning at 6AM, I get to hear loud, screeching machinery.