E3 2011 - A Nintendo Review

So E3 has come and gone this year, and as I have been known to have opinions about these newfangled video game things, I am going to air some of them.

Opinion Number One:

The Wii U? Honest to god? I make a siren noise and pretend to be an ambulance every time I try to talk about it. Wee-ooo Wee-ooo Wee-ooo! Putting Wii in the title at all is a bad idea if they want to try and appeal to hardcore gamers, which is what they've said they want to do. Make it a siren noise and you might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says "Fuck you, hardcore gamers!"

Only the 'Fuck' would be blanked out because this is a Nintendo game and we can't swear, now.


It does look cool as hell, though. I was worried about how ergonomic their monster iPad controller would be, but I hear they're actually quite light and easy to hold, which is nice. And being able to just download the game onto the controller when your surly room mate wants to watch House is awesome.

And great for teenagers whose parents tell them to go outside and get some fresh air.

And the quality of the graphics is so wonderful I want to lick the screen. Their HD Zelda demo made my brains fall out all over the floor.


(Now they just have to actually make that game.)


Opinion Number Two:

Speaking of Zelda, what the fuck, new Skyward Sword trailer.

SO MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS.

Please humour some wild Zelda speculation on my part for a moment, would you?

My initial thought about that blonde girl was that Zelda was too obvious and she'd turn out to be Link's sister, Aryll. But then a screenshot surfaced where the dialogue box specifically said "Just wait until Zelda sees this!" So, she's Zelda. Got it. I've heard several complains that she isn't pretty enough to be Zelda.

For those of you who didn't click the link and watch the trailer, that's this girl here:




I'm sorry, she's not pretty enough for you fourteen year old lard-asses sitting in the dark eating Cheetos? Fuck you.

But I digress.

I keep hearing that this game is meant to be the very first in the tangled mess that is the Zelda timeline. If this is official I missed the announcement, but since nobody seems to argue about it on message boards--a miracle, where the Zelda timeline is concerned--I'll take that at face value.

If it is true, I'm beyond excited that they're finally manning up and trying to give us a solid starting point in the timeline to jump off of. And it adds all kind of intrigue. The reason that Zelda's clothes, at least, are relatively plain when compared to her magical fairy princess sparkle dress could well be that she simply isn't a princess yet. And not-princess versions of Zelda are always my favourite.

Of course, she still manages to get kidnapped in the space of the trailer, but that is kind of her accepted role. (At least when she isn't Sheik or Tetra.)

I love that the Master Sword is apparently a lady, also. I actually have no idea where they're going with that, but I love it anyway. But my main question is this:

Purple guy! Who the hell are you? Vaati? Or are we getting a new guy? You're so sassy! You have to love a villain in eyeliner and tight pants. Though, the fact that the art direction for Skyward Sword reminds me very much of Link to the Past, it makes me want to theorize wildly that he's a young Aghanim or something. But Link to the Past is supposedly the last game in the time line, so unless Aghanim lives pretty much forever and survives the Flood, that theory is pretty well fucked. Whoever he is, though, I kind of love him already. Villains with(flamboyantly gay) style are the greatest.

Opinions Three and Four:

SONIC GENERATIONS, I COULD KISS YOU RIGHT ON THE MOUTH.

Gimmie that classic Sonic game play. Love it. And I love that they combined it with regular 3D play as well--because I do like that sometimes. The shambling mess of 3D Sonic games in the last ...okay, everything after Sonic & Knuckles gets some of my ire. And don't even get me started on Shadow the Hedgehog--it's not every game about a mutant hedgehog that manages to be racist.

And as for you, Luigi's Mansion 2, congratulations on convincing me to buy a 3DS. Damn you.

...And for making me scream like a little damn girl.

Well, This is Awkward.

So I haven't written on this blog in over a year. How fitting that another rant is to follow.

(But after that I'm going to write about video games, I promise.)

There is a big, obvious problem with the way writing is taught at the University level--or at the very least, a problem with how it's taught at my University. I couldn't articulate it until my professor clarified it for me.

"If you still slip into the passive voice I'm going to consider you a beginning writer, and you aren't likely to get more than a C in this class."

This is a second year class--and first year consisted of only one year long class that you had to do well in to go on to it. So for some of us, this is the first workshop we had ever taken. Being twenty is pretty much the definition of being a beginning writer on a professional level. I'm barely out of high school. Yet I'm expected to write like I've been working in the industry for years? Why the hell am I in this class, then? What am I paying you for?

At no point in high school or university had passive voice even been discussed. (High school English classes are much more concerned with what the underlying metaphor is in novels that don't have them than they are about teaching clear writing. Grammar is not a requirement. My tenth grade English teacher had to cram a section about it into the rest of the curriculum because he believed it should be there. But that's a rant unto itself.) But this is an enormous part of good writing and too much passive voice will quickly turn your style to mush.

Does this not seem like something we should be taught early on, before it becomes habit? English and Writing courses teach almost nothing. They're a good way to force you to practice and work against a deadline. At the University level they're good for pointing out the gaps in your high school education. But for actually teaching the mechanics of good English and clear writing? Useless. The only time I learn anything is after I've done it wrong and lost marks.

The problem with the way writing is taught at the University level is that it isn't. You go to class, they tell you to write, and then they tell you what you did wrong. You're never told how to do it right in the first place.

This begs the question, though, of where the fault for this lies. University? High School? Parents? Lazy students? The damn music the kids listen to these days?

Or does everyone start with the wrong attitude in the first place?

English is not the kind of course that can be packaged and measured and tested like Math. Provincial test scores are not going to tell you a damned thing. The English 12 exam has been simplified to the point that it's almost impossible to fail. They want these kids to graduate and get out. English is not viewed as an important subject. People tend to view it as something closer to music and art--a non-essential course for arty hippies who can't get a real job.

Then these same people complain about how they can't understand a word their kids are saying.

How did this happen? The average person is scientifically clueless and many people cringe away from the very idea of math. But Canada has a 99.0% literacy rate. And while that might include people who can barely read, they still wouldn't laugh about it the way people who struggle with math do. People judge you if you can't read. But many people don't even realize that they can't write.

The kinds of people who say 'oh, I'd like to write a novel someday,' make real writers want to scream. Writing is so much more difficult than people think it is. A grammatically correct sentence is not the same as a good one. So, no, probably you could not write a novel someday after you finish with your 'real job,' which is hard.

Also if you say that to a professional writer, they will not be impressed. They will karate chop you in the throat. Or want to, at least.

So what should be done? That's not as tricky as a question as it might seem. Make writing part of English courses and remove well-reasoned paragraphs addressing whether Shakespeare is a great writer or the greatest writer altogether. Teach them how to construct a sentence, teach them style, teach them what not to do. Teach them grammar whether they like it or not. Show them that it is not as easy as it looks. But most of all show them that it's worthwhile.

Then maybe your teenagers will start speaking English instead of l33t.

-























(By the talented and perceptive Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. )

Why You and Your No Fat, No Sugar, No Foam, Dairy-Free Vanilla What The Fuck Is Even the Point Latte Can Go Bite Yourselves

So I was in line at Starbucks the other day. (And before you start giving me a hard time, their business model is being convenient no matter where on the planet you happen to be located. If I want a decent hot chocolate on my break they're the only place to go. Plus their fudge oat bars and green tea frappucinos are delicious.) And there were two women in front of me in line. One of these women was everything that is wrong with society all in one convenient package of obnoxious self-important yuppie. The barista has a lineup of orders being taken on one side and a group of people waiting for orders that have already been made on the other. She puts this woman's cup on the counter a trifle hastily.

A drop runs over the side.

Does the woman in front of me just let it go? No. Does she even politely ask the barista to wipe the side of the cup off? Again, no. She starts talking to herself, looking at the cup. In a voice most people reserve for looking ridiculous while talking to small cute animals who have done something wrong.

"Oh, look, there's coffee down the side. How am I supposed to pick this up? I just washed my hands. Hmm. Oh, look, she's ignoring me."

Yes, she's ignoring you, because you are too fucking ridiculous to just turn around and grab a napkin without bitching.

In the end she did have to wipe it off herself (poor baby) because the barista rightfully kept on ignoring her, but I was left to be frustrated by the number of people in existence who are just like this woman for the rest of the night. When did we get like this? How did we get to be so phenomenally lazy, rude and inconsiderate? But then again, if a friend had been making that coffee for her she probably would have told them not to worry about it.

What I'd really like to know is what makes it okay to abuse other human beings just because it's their job to do something you've asked? If anything you should be extra polite to these people because they can spit in your stupid takes-ten-minutes-to-call-out latte. What is it, exactly, about the fact that somebody is making you a burger or selling you a sweater that fills people with contempt for the very air they breathe? People in food services seem to get the worst of this. Fat-faced idiots screaming their lungs out at some overworked waitress for not getting their pitcher of water out promptly enough need to be turned inside out and stuffed in a garbage disposal. Or if you're more into poetic irony, they need to go bankrupt and end up working in food services. See how they do when they have to smile cheerfully for every loudmouthed blowhard who comes in for a sandwich.

If whether or not your fries are crispy enough is the worst of your troubles, please please please shut up. You have nothing to bitch about.

But this isn't limited to food services by any stretch of the imagination. If you have to deal with the public, a large chunk of that public is going to treat you like shit. I was on the bus to my mother's today. A young man on a mountain bike was told to wait for the next bus because the bike rack was full. After trying to talk the driver into letting him take his bike onto the bus and being refused (due to that space being needed for things like, oh, old people, wheelchairs and babies) he cursed him out at the top of his lungs and was thrown off the bus. He then proceeded to ride after the bus for three stops, at each one being refused and every time cursing out the bus driver. The final time I had turned my music off to listen, just in time to hear this guy scream 'fuck you, old man! You piece of shit!' and punch the side of the bus.

This guy had to be in his late twenties at least, and he simply didn't have the ability to accept that he could not have something, that he could possibly be denied something by this bus driver. That there could ever be a situation where the rules could not be changed for him, because he is such a special snowflake.

How do people get like this?

I've had a man scream at me that I couldn' t handle the truth, an old couple get incredibly angry at me for asking if they wanted their one cent of change and more customers than I can count talk down to me like I was six years old and just asked if elephants were fish. Meaning that at work I've been accused of being a liar, a thief and and idiot. And I work in a book store.

No phrase has ever been more damaging than 'the customer is always right.' The customer is rarely right at best. At worst the customer is a raving lunatic.

Sartre once said that 'hell is other people.' Following this line of thought, customer service is the deepest ring of hell. And it pays minimum wage.

So please. Be nice to the baristas.

How I Remembered That Science is Awesome (And why everybody forgets in the first place)

When I was a kid, I was going to be an astronomer. I read every book about space I could possibly get my hands on, and the episode of Magic School Bus where they travelled through the solar system was my all-time favourite. (Even though they never showed it despite how they had already aired the episode about the water cycle a million frickin' times.) I loved space, and that was just what I was going to do.

Then I was introduced to the world of public school math classes. Math has never been an area of natural talent for me, and this was exacerbated beyond help by my experience learning the basics I needed for everything else. While my teachers were pretty competent at teaching the material, they had no control over something else more important to a little girl- the opinion of her classmates. No matter what we happened to be learning, a handful of the kids who grasped it easily would declare (at top volume, over and over again) that if you don't understand this instantly, you are the dumbest person to ever walk the Earth, ever.

And so when the teacher would ask, "Any questions?" I would stay quiet, not wanting to look like the dumbest person to ever walk the Earth, ever. So I wouldn't understand the next subject introduced since it depended on the first, and then I wouldn't understand the next because it depended on the last two, and so on exponentially until I was scraping along with a C- for the rest of my math career. By 8th grade I was totally convinced that I just simply wasn't able to learn math and gave up trying. Instead I dedicated myself to daydreaming, doodling in class and avoiding my math homework. (All much to the despair of my math teacher at the time. On the off chance you ever read this: I am so sorry for tormenting you, Mr. Harris.)

Of course, I only understand this looking back on it. At the time I was convinced I was simply too stupid and stopped making an effort. Then in 11th grade, despite barely being able to subtract large numbers without a calculator I managed a C+ and very nearly a B, but for Trigonometry's ability to make my brain tie itself in a knot and shoot itself in the face. This was with effort and a fantastic teacher (thank you so much for having the patience to explain everything to me three extra times, Mr. Jaswal). No miracles required. So perhaps, just perhaps, I wasn't entirely useless. (Admittedly, I failed the provincial exam anyway. You really do need those basic skills.)

((Looking over what I have so far, I think I may rename this blog 'brackets are totally awesome.))

But, you ask, what does all of this have to do with science? Get to the science, woman!

Okay, jeez. No need to yell.

Getting back to astronomy, that is a job that requires an awful lot of physics (they're the same department at my University) which in turn requires an awful lot of math. I did not realize this as a kid. Parents and teachers looked at my math grades, looked at the stars in my eyes and the doodles all over my arms and then gently suggested that I might want to try something less math-centric, like maybe a janitor or a trapeze artist. By this time a fear and revulsion in regards to math had already burrowed deep into my brain- all hope of becoming an astronomer shattered into little pieces and was swept into a dark and quiet corner of my mind. Heavy furniture was moved over it. Dust gathered. I still remember the feeling of that dream falling apart eleven years later- I've associated math with that feeling ever since, and science right into the bargain.

I don't think I'm the only person this happens to. When we're children, science is awesome. Science is hands on, science is explosions and bugs and volcanoes and dinosaurs and chemical reactions and caterpillars turning into butterflies in a tank at the side of your 2nd grade class. Science is cool.

Then you hit middle school. Then science is worksheets and tables and diagrams and for the love of god, don't touch that you pimply oaf. Science is for geeks and losers. Science is hard and boring and kissing cousins with the looming spectre that is math. 14 year old kids have way more important things to do, like vandalize mailboxes and wander around in the middle of the road with their pants around their knees terrorizing everyone who passes within hearing range. That's cool, man. And this seems to be the attitude that sticks with us into adulthood. Not necessarily the pants or the vandalizing, but the idea that science is the enemy and for people who get mud kicked on them in gym class and have 'faggot' scrawled on their binders when they aren't looking.

Compound this with the treatment science gets by the media (Mad scientists! Chemicals! Nuclear weapons! LARGE HADRON COLLIDERS THAT SOUNDS CONFUSING AND SCARY HOLY SHIT) and fundamentalist religion (the Catholic church did not concede that the Earth revolved around the sun until 1992. Galileo proved otherwise almost 400 years ago. The notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun is even older, first proposed in the 3rd century BC by Aristarchus of Samos) and suddenly it's no surprise that science is generally viewed with suspicion.

I wasn't much different. Admittedly I was well aware the Earth revolved around the sun, but if you told me the Large Hadron Collider was going to create a black hole that would eat us all up I'd have believed you without questioning it much. Something not taught in school that desperately needs to be is skepticism. I work at a bookstore and the only conclusion I can draw from the massive sales of New Age, pseudoscience and self-help books like The Secret (spoiler: the secret is you just wasted some money) is that we live in an incredibly credulous society.

People are always telling me things they half-remember from some article somewhere or heard from a friend of a friend of a raving drug-addled homeless man as though they were unassailable fact. A good example of this is the chocolate milk myth- that 'they' mix in pus and blood and other horrible things to make it look like that! Ooga booga! I like this one because it requires the triumvirate of assumptions that a) pus and blood taste like chocolate b) this doesn't give people infections and c) there is literally nobody standing between you and poisoned food with mutated rat heads in it.

Obviously this is all ridiculous, but everyone wants to believe a sufficiently freaky sounding myth, especially if it gives you the opportunity to ruin someone else's lunch. So nobody thinks about it at all. I had a teacher mention this myth to me once. Let that sink in for a minute. People believe ridiculous things because it's easier and more fun than actually using their brains. Intelligent, educated people who have been taught everything but how to view the world with a skeptical eye- because that's for people who kick kittens and those geeky scientists from earlier. Skepticism is treated like something for the bad guy scientist in movies and people who get 2 minutes of time as a counterpoint on shows about alien encounters. (Followed by a deep voice going 'BUT YOU DECIDE' and some more faked footage of frisbees in the dark and quarters taped to windshields. Chances are you don't have a better idea of whether it was a weather balloon or an alien spaceship than the scientist does, jackass.)

But wait, you say. How did I get to be skeptical when I was even more math and science averse than your average person before? Did rogue scientists break my kneecaps or what? Well, no. It was surprisingly simple. I read a book. I got the urge to take up stargazing again, because the love of all things space had never really left me. So I got a copy of Nightwatch and an Encyclopedia of Space. Then I started reading Bad Astronomy. My interest in science increased the more I knew. So I read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. I devoured it. Then I read Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. I'm convinced that everyone should read those last two books. I would give them to the president if I could. To every president, priminister and monarch, and then right down to the bottom rungs of the political ladder.

People need to understand that fear of science, acceptance of pseudoscience and blind acceptance of everything some weird old German in a pointy hat tells you is a horrible way to live. Major scientific discoveries can always be abused, right down to the inventions of fire and the wheel. But the good nearly always outweighs the bad. Science and skepticism have given us more than can possibly be imagined. People always, always need to ask why why why, and we can't stop until we have the answer.

Domestic Poetry Abuse

Poetry and I have always had an abusive relationship. Despite repeated attempts, I have never been coerced into writing a sonnet. I never wrote poetry in my middle school goth phase. My attempt at something more exotic resulted in a rhyming haiku about cheese. Yet, I keep trying. Poetry is my abusive spouse who promises not to hurt me again over and over, because he's clean now and it will be better this time. And I keep believing it.

I have lived in fear of the final section of my Writing 100 course. Poetry has been lurking at the end of it like a serial killer at the end of an alleyway. I can see it's shadowed form hunched over the cobblestones, the glint of the meat cleaver it carries in the moonlight. I can hear the sound of blood and sonnets dripping off of it, pooling at Poetry's booted feet. But I can't stop running towards it.

But now that I've arrived, the shadowy figure stood up and turned out to be a small blonde woman with a bizarre sense of humour who prefers free verse, and has 'descended from line of assassins' written next to my name on the attendance sheet.

I am so confused.

Marginally Excellent

Alternate title: How verbal clutter is ruining everything.

Last year, I took a University literature class. We were asked to find a partner to prepare a presentation with. I was lucky enough to have a partner I knew, and we worked well together. We worked hard on our project, and practiced our presentation until we had it down. We presented without incident, until the next week, when we received our professor's comment sheet. The first two words still baffle me:

Marginally excellent.

Marginally.

This was a year ago now and I still don't know what the hell that means. Something either is excellent, or it isn't. You can't be kind of excellent, or a little bit excellent, and there is no way an unholy, shambling abomination like marginally excellent should ever be unleashed upon the world. This instinct to puff up everything you say or write to sound more important has got to stop. Nowhere is this more important than among teachers. Already difficult topics can be made completely inaccessible by 'academic' English, as the only thing academic about it seems to be the plethora of words nobody actually uses in speech (i.e, plethora). Students need criticism of their work. It's one of the biggest parts of your job as a teacher, and if all you're giving your students is shapeless mush like 'marginally excellent,' you're failing them. Cut the crap. Either say excellent if that's what you mean, or good if it isn't quite excellent. It's a perfectly good word. A perfectly excellent word. Not a perfectly marginally excellent word.

I have another teacher now who is even worse for this kind of thing. Nothing that comes out of his mouth is shorter than five syllables and the same goes for the readings he assigns. Not a clear, solid, Anglo-Saxon word in sight. An example from one of the readings:

But this is the point: we are no longer dealing here with a theoretical mode of representation: we are dealing with this particular image, which is given for this particular signification. Mythical speech is made of a material which has already been worked on so as to make it suitable for communication: it is because all the materials of myth (whether pictorial or written) presuppose a signifying consciousness, that one can reason about them while discounting their substance.

Is anyone else asleep yet? Everything out of my professor's mouth sounds like this. I never understand what we're supposed to be writing our assignments about, and asking him is useless because he's as fuzzy as the reading material. Good, clear English should be the only kind of English. If you can't explain it in simple words you don't understand it well enough, so shut up. Even my Victorian Literature professor, who I adore, does this in her writing. Take this assignment outline:

This assignment asks you to research and apply these same close reading skills to analyse a
passage from Matthew Arnold’s “Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse” (lines 79-108), exploring the relationship between the form of the passage and the content of the passage. That is, how does the passage reflect or contribute to the broader themes of the poem? How does the form (metre, literary techniques) echo content? Although you may want to refer to other parts of the poem, your focus should remain on the passage you are analysing—its figurative language, tone, voice, and imagery. Please note that you are not performing a plot summary in this assignment, but rather a careful analysis of figurative language, tone, voice, and imagery.

I lost marks on this assignment because she was unsure what my focus was on. Am I the only one who sees the irony here? Anybody? While her language is (fairly) clear, as poetry has a lot of jargon you can't get around, her point has to be sifted out with the patience of an archaeologist trying to retrieve a fragile piece of beige pottery from a pile of sand. If the students don't know what they're supposed to be focusing on, their focus will wander in the attempt to get lucky and hit the right subject.

Academic English is another language all its own, and your students don't speak it. Would you teach a lesson in French to students who speak only Japanese? Then don't teach in Academic to students who speak English.

Procrastination and Poetry Analysis

So, after procrastinating on writing another post, I am now writing another post to put off doing my Victorian literature homework.

That is some zen shit, there. Some kind of infinite circle of procrastination. If you were high while you read that and your brain seized up, I apologize.

Anyway. Poetry analysis has never been a strong point of mine. I can generally get the shallow meaning of a poem, and maybe a few deeper things once I've read it 12 times, but most of the time I'm just happy to enjoy the pretty words. This makes writing three pages of analysis on one passage of a poem a somewhat daunting prospect. Making it Victorian poetry, one the densest kinds of poetry on the planet, and you just have a clusterfuck of "I have no idea what the hell he was getting at, professor, but it sounded nice."

Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeear.

All this adds up to is p.r.o.c.r.a.s.t.i.n.a.t.i.o.n, which is doom for a writer but also something writers are particularly susceptible to. Which is another use for this blog- this is a warm-up, being the first thing I've actually written today. At eight pm. I am truly a literary wunderkind. But the important thing for any writer who is not possessed of superhuman amounts of willpower is to have some informal way to get going. Writing is like sports; if you don't warm up first, you're liable to find yourself in a lot of trouble.

Particularly if you're my sad crippled self who managed to pull a muscle reaching down for a pen.

I know, I'm impressed with me, too.

If there's a point to all this it's that I hope to follow up this post on Monday with the story of how I managed to get around my Poetry Fail, and hopefully it will help some other poor poetry-impaired student in need. Or at least make the rest of you feel better about yourselves for choosing to be math majors.

How's that calculus going, you guys? WO0OO COSINE RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULES what do you mean that is not even calculus it is NUMBERS and therefore it is all the same, yes?

I should not be allowed to post things on the internet when I have had no protein all day and am totally incomprehensible. But I have now written today, and that was the whole point of this blog.

Cheers.