Monday, February 18, 2008

You Have Attained the Rank Of Harpy Slayer

Here is my deep, dark confession....my part-time addiction to creating alter egos on my favorite MMORPG where I currently exist as a black, half-elf Templar with a faithful pet duck. For those of you who believe only children and ultra-geeks engage in this sort of activity, my current main playing partner is a 50 something Italian engineer who plays from his office in Rome. Granted we may both be ultra-geeks but children we are definitely not.

The sad thing is that while busily slaying orcs, bugbears and harpies in our little fictional universe we actually manage to have more interesting conversations than I've been able to find for the most part in the blog world. Somehow I can't feature my game friend going on a rant about Bill Clinton's wagging a finger at someone idiotic enough to attend a rally just to heckle the speaker or engaging in the ultra-paranoid anti-Obama rants I've seen on some blogs of late.

Even stranger we differ on which US candidate we support but manage to discuss politics without raising insane arguments. Truth is if I were stupid enough to raise many of the arguments I've seen written on blogs and flogged to death in the media he would assume I'd lost my mind and he'd be correct.

At least two of my favorite bloggers, Mixter and Vigilante have expressed similar feelings of disenchantment with the current, I hesitate to call it "dialogue" but whatever it is. Hang in there both of you, please. Take a break if you must but don't throw in the towel because we've had decades of lunatics running this asylum and it's time saner voices took over.

I don't live in the blog world full time like some nor do I live in my fictional game world full time, most of my time is actually spent in the very ordinary real world and I prefer to keep it that way though both of the others are wonderful alternatives at times and I have no plans to quit any. The thing is that despite my ever present pessimism about the human race in general I've seen enough evidence of at least a sizeable minority of people capable of using logic and reason to make it worthwhile to keep trying.

The alternative would be to just give up and disappear into some fantasy universe full time and that I am not prepared to do.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some days it is just harder to ignore the whack jobs than others ...

sigh ...

but, hey, hang in there!

TomCat said...

I'm with NMR.

The contraindications between Clinton and Obama supporters have become absurd, and the MSM loves to fan the flames.

Not Your Mama said...

Saving my tin foil for cooking baked potatoes ;).

Sitting here waiting for the Wisconsin results to start coming in.

Woozie said...

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Crack in disc form.

And I hate RPGs.

Dammit, now I have to play it! Look what you made me do!

TomCat said...

Although I expected Obama to win Wisconsin, his margin of victory surprised me, because the state was ideally situated demographically to what Clinton considers her base.

ryk said...

I must confess I had to do a search to find out what MMORPG stood for, but I fully understand the need to occasionally turn away from the lunacy of our political system. Lately, for me, it's been a lot of frisbee golf and lightweight fiction.

Not Your Mama said...

TC: Remember my comment a long while back about "squishy" bases and name recognition? 'nuff said.

BTW, can't speak to the whole of Wisconson but I am familiar with the area from the Minn border through Madison...per capita one of the sanest populations this country can boast of. The media lumping it in with Ill/OH/etc based on income and other demographic data made a huge mistake, apples and oranges. They can make cheesehead jokes all day but the truth is one of the chief exports of WI is medical research. State has some of the best schools and health care in the country and probably THE best if you exclude states that average working people cannot afford to live in. Why d'you suppose it made my list of possible retirement locations in spite of godawful climate? I do my research ;).

Woozie: there's a shadowknight in you just waiting to come out lol.

Ryk: that's as good as anything and sure beats gambling.

Woozie said...

I'm funning out of stuff to do and NPCs to kill...I really wish Bethesda would put out more expansion packs...

Woozie said...

*running. Cocaine's a hell of a drug.

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