I randomly decided to play GTAIV again. Started the mission where you have to taxi Little Jacob around, ignoring his incomprehensible babbling and relying on mission markers and tutorial text boxes to know where to go. I got shot up pretty bad in the first encounter, then had to waste time finding a burger joint to get my health back. So basically, major skill-oriented games are all going the route of pussified health auto-regen, yet a game that prides itself in gangster-tough immersion finds the need to force the player to drive out of the way in the middle of a mission to eat a burger instead of letting their health regen on the drive to the next mission point so they can keep the action going. Brilliant.
Got to the second mission spot, followed the instructions for taking cover, then my AI partner got shot after just a few seconds of entering the house, failing the mission for me. Awesome. I was going to force my way through the game so I can at least say that I've beaten it in case the need arises to defend my experience in a debate about the title. Sadly, this has become the main reason I complete most games nowadays instead of joy. Don't want to be that guy at a game development company that hasn't completed Halo 3.
I was going to beat GTAIV this week or next, but fuck it. I need to take another several month break from this overrated piece of mediocrity.
As I type this, a hotdog vender barks repeatedly every ten seconds, repeating the same line at least once a minute. High frequency bark repeating. In a 2008 title. Not a point I would normally drill on, especiailly in a world as large and asset-filled as Liberty City, but this game is full of such flaws and nuisances and yet still has a 98 on metacritic. And objectively-backed flaws aside, I will argue with my subjective liberties that it just doesn't provide an entertaining experience. I don't care if your world is so detailed I can watch TV in it - in fact, if you choose to implement this unnecessary functionality, chances are these are manhours that could have gone into fixing some of the questionable missions. No, I don't want a world where I can do many boring things - I want a world where the things I can do are fun.
This game is not much fun. Whatever enjoyment I started to have when I first played it has quickly gone out the window from the linear, frustrating missions whose failure conditions never cause me to think that I messed up. Driving between missions, a task quite central to the theme of the game (and implied in the title), has become a chore. There is a huge city to explore, and no compelling reason to do so. The difficulty, while not obscene, is a hindrance to the immersion, and forcing the player to chow down on fast food to regain health feels like a waste of time. Yes, I usually lament health regen in challenge-oriented games, but GTA has always been more about the experience than overcoming difficulty, so this design decision (or lack of real design thoughtfulness?) is painfully tragic.
To put things into perspective for anyone that thinks I'm just an artsy game designer belittling yet another high profile mass appeal sequel, I will go on record as saying that Halo 3 was a good game. It was enjoyable. It wasn't particularly special, but the action was streamlined. I hate its success in light of the failures of better titles, but I enjoyed completing it. GTAIV, not so much. Not nearly so much.
Can someone please tell me why this game has a 98/100 on metacritic? Or why I have bothered studying the craft of better game design via subtraction and pitching interesting and innovative gameplay ideas when groupthink shit riddled with high level and low level flaws wrapped in a controversial sandbox package with unnecessary simulation (TV shows???) thrown in to fill the void where good pacing should have been implemented sells millions and woos critics??
Okay, in a less bitter note, can anyone who enjoys this game tell me if/why you think it deserves a near perfect score, much more than SotC, Bioshock, or Braid?
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Advertising Blues
So I got home around 9 tonight, not because I just finished a late night at the office, but because I haven't finished my work yet and just decided to get some food and finish it at home. I could rant about that, but it's more of a mild annoyance than a topic worthy of a full blog post. That is, assuming that it stops occurring so frequently, an assumption I hold onto like a battered wife holding her black eye and smiling as she reminisces about the golden days and tells herself they're coming back, just around the corner. I'm not sure what my "golden" days are in this metaphor since I have been crunching constantly from the day I entered the industry, an unfortunate side effect of being put on a game being rushed to completion in less time than it should really be given, laid off, then being hired and put on another game being rushed to completion in less time than it should really be given.
This post is about what was waiting for me when I got home. An apple software update. An innocuous yet pesky blue-iconed window that I usually close out of habit while I'm trying to get work done. Since I am waiting for a build to finish, I decided to go ahead and accept the updates to get it out of my way. After telling it that I don't want to reboot my computer now (have we still not found a way to ubiquitously update software without bringing the user's system to a full halt?), I was greeted with a followup window advertising some new software that I might want to download.
So next I decided to play some PC games. I opened my Steam client, which took a while to load as always, possibly because it's loading these ads in the background of this software suite that I paid for. That I paid a lot for, as Steam games, despite digital distribution, are just as expensive as boxed games. And yet they still feel the need to open a second window of ads and further peck away at my dwindling economy of attention when I just want to enjoy some games that I have paid for in a short break period sandwiched by long hours at work. They don't call them ads; no, they call it "Update News". Closing that window, I see an animation in my main steam client (which defaults to the "store" tab instead of the more useful "my games" tab upon opening, to guarantee diverting your attention to their advertising) that cycles through a list of huge budget games that everyone knows exist anyway. Particularly interesting is the ad for Fallout 3, boasting a "100/100" score on Gamespy, a site that uses a 5 star rating system. Yes, there is a huge difference between 5/5 and 100/100, but who am I to judge marketing spin. Even more remarkable is that I purchased the PC version of Fallout 3 from Steam on the day it came out! And they're still advertising it to me??? They know what games I purchased from them! Not only are they wasting my time and attention, they aren't even doing it efficiently!
It would be interesting to see a study of our modern economy of attention and how much advertising and constant update reminders cost us in this economy. How many times a day do you find yourself updating something? Do you even know what you're getting when you update it? Is it improving your use of the software, or just moving some GUI components around so you have to relearn where things are? I recently had a stressful time trying to put together hospital bills and insurance statements after heart surgery due to the piles of junk mail that would pile up when I got home from 12+ hour shifts at work. Do you ever have these problems? spam, pop unders, telemarketers? Seconds of your life, robbed from you by a faceless corporation's childish need for attention. A shame really, as time is the most nonrenewable resource.
This post is about what was waiting for me when I got home. An apple software update. An innocuous yet pesky blue-iconed window that I usually close out of habit while I'm trying to get work done. Since I am waiting for a build to finish, I decided to go ahead and accept the updates to get it out of my way. After telling it that I don't want to reboot my computer now (have we still not found a way to ubiquitously update software without bringing the user's system to a full halt?), I was greeted with a followup window advertising some new software that I might want to download.
So next I decided to play some PC games. I opened my Steam client, which took a while to load as always, possibly because it's loading these ads in the background of this software suite that I paid for. That I paid a lot for, as Steam games, despite digital distribution, are just as expensive as boxed games. And yet they still feel the need to open a second window of ads and further peck away at my dwindling economy of attention when I just want to enjoy some games that I have paid for in a short break period sandwiched by long hours at work. They don't call them ads; no, they call it "Update News". Closing that window, I see an animation in my main steam client (which defaults to the "store" tab instead of the more useful "my games" tab upon opening, to guarantee diverting your attention to their advertising) that cycles through a list of huge budget games that everyone knows exist anyway. Particularly interesting is the ad for Fallout 3, boasting a "100/100" score on Gamespy, a site that uses a 5 star rating system. Yes, there is a huge difference between 5/5 and 100/100, but who am I to judge marketing spin. Even more remarkable is that I purchased the PC version of Fallout 3 from Steam on the day it came out! And they're still advertising it to me??? They know what games I purchased from them! Not only are they wasting my time and attention, they aren't even doing it efficiently!
It would be interesting to see a study of our modern economy of attention and how much advertising and constant update reminders cost us in this economy. How many times a day do you find yourself updating something? Do you even know what you're getting when you update it? Is it improving your use of the software, or just moving some GUI components around so you have to relearn where things are? I recently had a stressful time trying to put together hospital bills and insurance statements after heart surgery due to the piles of junk mail that would pile up when I got home from 12+ hour shifts at work. Do you ever have these problems? spam, pop unders, telemarketers? Seconds of your life, robbed from you by a faceless corporation's childish need for attention. A shame really, as time is the most nonrenewable resource.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Bad ACS, no Twinkie
So I've gotten back into Doom modding again, and during the process I have had to pick up ACS again. After spending over an hour trying to print a single sentence to screen (I'll get to that in a second) and having Doom Builder crash Yet Again, losing all of my progress, I figured I needed a break to blow off steam.
So why did it take me so long to print a message to the screen? Modularity. The mod I am making is going to have a lot of text printed to the screen, and in realizing this up front I decided to go ahead and write a function that would center it and compute the duration (how long the text should be displayed) based on string length to save me some typing. There is a rant in here alright, but there are also some interesting programming issues that I want to touch on lightly. For example, how do we balance planning ahead and building foundations with actually getting shit done? There, that was lightly, wasn't it?
Basically, I wanted to go from typing this:
hudMessage(s:"mah message"; HUDMSG_PLAIN | HUDMSG_LOG, 0, CR_GRAY, 0.5, 0.5, duration);
to typing this:
pcThink("mah message", duration)
and have the 'duration' variable be intelligently calculated (with the option to explicitly set it in cases where the default algorithm generates suboptimal results). Thus I set out to write the pcThink function. After several iterations, I ended up with the following:
function int pcThink(str thought, int duration)
{
// a value of 0 for the duration means the caller wants
// us to figure it out for ourselves
if (duration == 0.0)
{
duration = strLen(thought) * 65536;
duration = duration / 10.0 + 1.0;
}
hudMessage(s:thought; HUDMSG_PLAIN | HUDMSG_LOG, 0,
CR_GRAY, 0.5, 0.5, duration);
// return our duration in tics so it can be used in
// delay() calls
return duration * 35 / 65536;
}
If you can spot the mistake, then maybe you deserve a twinkie. ACS does not. I'll give you a hint: the symptom of the bug was that my messages were not lasting long enough. And no, there were no compile errors.
Okay, maybe you noticed my liberal mix of floats (they're actually fixed point values in ACS) and ints. duration is, after all, declared as an int, and I am multiplying it by 65536 in one place then diving it by 10.0 in another. Am I crazy? Have my rugged good looks finally gotten the best of my mental facilities? Perhaps - nay, likely. But that is not the cause of my problems in this instance, though you would be looking in the right direction.
hudMessage takes a fixed point value for its last parameter, which represents how long the message is supposed to be displayed to the screen. I am passing in duration here, which was declared as an int, but like any good language ACS coerces ints to floats (fixeds?) and vice versa, which all sounds keen and gives one a warm fuzzy feeling, right? Except that this coercion is done in a manner described most accurately as despicable. ints in ACS are 4 byte storage containers, pretty typical. Fixed point values do not technically exist in that there is no fixed keyword like there is an "int" keyword, though there are fixed point literals which can be illustrated by the following declaration:
int wolfInSheepsClothing = 50.0;
The way this is stored is that the upper 2 bytes represent the decimal value (things to the right of the period) while the lower 2 bytes represent the integral value (things to the left of the period). This is atrocious! 1.0 does not equal 1 in this system, and not just because it actually equals 1.0000001. No, because 1.0 actually equals 65536! In Soviet ACS, 1.0 + 1 equals 65537! I'm not even kidding! Who the hell thought this was a good idea?! The error in my above code is where I am dividing by 10.0, intending to increase the duration by one second for every ten characters in the message, but I instead increase the duration by one second for every 6554 characters!
Other gripes with ACS include dividing time into units of 35 tics per second (I'm sure there's a good reason...) and converting strings to ints when using the plus operator instead of concatenating or generating a compile error. ACS is actually a pretty good language for what it's meant to do and provides script parallelization that is easy to rationalize.
I am getting sick of goofy language design decisions pandering to low-level needs slowing down my high-level development. We need better abstractions that fit with our taught domain knowledge of mathematics and text so we can write "x = 1 + 2.0" without worrying about coercion tricks while "x = "foo" + 7" or "if (someIntegerValue)" will not compile. And don't get me started about pointer arithmetic. Also, why on earth have units not become more prevalent? I might not remember if delay(int) expects tics or seconds, but if I am allowed to type "delay(70 tics)" or "delay(2 seconds)" at my whim, I don't have to remember. And having static unit analysis at compile time could avoid certain embarassing blunders.
Oh, and indexing starting at zero! Dijkstra be damned, I still find this to be a counter intuitive (and thus incorrect) language design decision after over a decade of programming with it, though for the sake of brevity I will save the details for another post.
The problem as I see it is that programming language decisions were originally made based on memory limitations and thinking too closely to the machine. We have not evolved enough past these tarpits. We don't have enough, or any, "High Enough Level" languages. You've probably heard the cobbler's children analogy applied to programming, particularly to language design. If we were shoe makers, we would be hammering horseshoes on our kids' feet if nails were cheaper than stitches. Swear to God.
So why did it take me so long to print a message to the screen? Modularity. The mod I am making is going to have a lot of text printed to the screen, and in realizing this up front I decided to go ahead and write a function that would center it and compute the duration (how long the text should be displayed) based on string length to save me some typing. There is a rant in here alright, but there are also some interesting programming issues that I want to touch on lightly. For example, how do we balance planning ahead and building foundations with actually getting shit done? There, that was lightly, wasn't it?
Basically, I wanted to go from typing this:
hudMessage(s:"mah message"; HUDMSG_PLAIN | HUDMSG_LOG, 0, CR_GRAY, 0.5, 0.5, duration);
to typing this:
pcThink("mah message", duration)
and have the 'duration' variable be intelligently calculated (with the option to explicitly set it in cases where the default algorithm generates suboptimal results). Thus I set out to write the pcThink function. After several iterations, I ended up with the following:
function int pcThink(str thought, int duration)
{
// a value of 0 for the duration means the caller wants
// us to figure it out for ourselves
if (duration == 0.0)
{
duration = strLen(thought) * 65536;
duration = duration / 10.0 + 1.0;
}
hudMessage(s:thought; HUDMSG_PLAIN | HUDMSG_LOG, 0,
CR_GRAY, 0.5, 0.5, duration);
// return our duration in tics so it can be used in
// delay() calls
return duration * 35 / 65536;
}
If you can spot the mistake, then maybe you deserve a twinkie. ACS does not. I'll give you a hint: the symptom of the bug was that my messages were not lasting long enough. And no, there were no compile errors.
Okay, maybe you noticed my liberal mix of floats (they're actually fixed point values in ACS) and ints. duration is, after all, declared as an int, and I am multiplying it by 65536 in one place then diving it by 10.0 in another. Am I crazy? Have my rugged good looks finally gotten the best of my mental facilities? Perhaps - nay, likely. But that is not the cause of my problems in this instance, though you would be looking in the right direction.
hudMessage takes a fixed point value for its last parameter, which represents how long the message is supposed to be displayed to the screen. I am passing in duration here, which was declared as an int, but like any good language ACS coerces ints to floats (fixeds?) and vice versa, which all sounds keen and gives one a warm fuzzy feeling, right? Except that this coercion is done in a manner described most accurately as despicable. ints in ACS are 4 byte storage containers, pretty typical. Fixed point values do not technically exist in that there is no fixed keyword like there is an "int" keyword, though there are fixed point literals which can be illustrated by the following declaration:
int wolfInSheepsClothing = 50.0;
The way this is stored is that the upper 2 bytes represent the decimal value (things to the right of the period) while the lower 2 bytes represent the integral value (things to the left of the period). This is atrocious! 1.0 does not equal 1 in this system, and not just because it actually equals 1.0000001. No, because 1.0 actually equals 65536! In Soviet ACS, 1.0 + 1 equals 65537! I'm not even kidding! Who the hell thought this was a good idea?! The error in my above code is where I am dividing by 10.0, intending to increase the duration by one second for every ten characters in the message, but I instead increase the duration by one second for every 6554 characters!
Other gripes with ACS include dividing time into units of 35 tics per second (I'm sure there's a good reason...) and converting strings to ints when using the plus operator instead of concatenating or generating a compile error. ACS is actually a pretty good language for what it's meant to do and provides script parallelization that is easy to rationalize.
I am getting sick of goofy language design decisions pandering to low-level needs slowing down my high-level development. We need better abstractions that fit with our taught domain knowledge of mathematics and text so we can write "x = 1 + 2.0" without worrying about coercion tricks while "x = "foo" + 7" or "if (someIntegerValue)" will not compile. And don't get me started about pointer arithmetic. Also, why on earth have units not become more prevalent? I might not remember if delay(int) expects tics or seconds, but if I am allowed to type "delay(70 tics)" or "delay(2 seconds)" at my whim, I don't have to remember. And having static unit analysis at compile time could avoid certain embarassing blunders.
Oh, and indexing starting at zero! Dijkstra be damned, I still find this to be a counter intuitive (and thus incorrect) language design decision after over a decade of programming with it, though for the sake of brevity I will save the details for another post.
The problem as I see it is that programming language decisions were originally made based on memory limitations and thinking too closely to the machine. We have not evolved enough past these tarpits. We don't have enough, or any, "High Enough Level" languages. You've probably heard the cobbler's children analogy applied to programming, particularly to language design. If we were shoe makers, we would be hammering horseshoes on our kids' feet if nails were cheaper than stitches. Swear to God.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Just a Theory
I'm no insider, but if I had to envision Microsoft's checklist by which they evaluated Vista's success I imagine it would look something like this:
1.) Implement unnecessary pseudo 3d alternative to alt+tab to satiate stockholder anticipation and give marketing something to play with
2.) Prevent Explorer from being able to handle more than 10 or so windows no matter how much RAM/virtual memory the user has available
3.) Do everything in our power to deprecate the creation and editing of Doom levels
If I am right, then bravo Microsoft; you are the very apex of accomplishment.
1.) Implement unnecessary pseudo 3d alternative to alt+tab to satiate stockholder anticipation and give marketing something to play with
2.) Prevent Explorer from being able to handle more than 10 or so windows no matter how much RAM/virtual memory the user has available
3.) Do everything in our power to deprecate the creation and editing of Doom levels
If I am right, then bravo Microsoft; you are the very apex of accomplishment.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Of Baptist Funerals
So my grandmother is dying. She could be taking her last breath as I type this. It is not a complete surprise; she has been a heavy smoker since long before I was born and has been told several times by medical professionals that she should quit or face death. She has been in the hospital before with the medical staff not expecting her to survive much longer. This is one of those times. They have placed her in what is known as a "hospice", which as I have learned is a rather nice extension of the hospital for those that do not have long to live. Interestingly enough, my mom told me recently that she has not asked for any more cigarettes, and seems to be at peace.
My dad called tonight, a few hours ago, to tell me the news that this is probably her last night. It was a moment I expected for at least a couple of months, a moment I dreaded, a moment I rehearsed, keeping myself up at night - but not for the reason you probably think. I dreaded it because he is a religious person, and I am not.
I am currently living in Santa Clara, California, a technology hub in a liberal state. Silicon Valley. I grew up in Spartanburg, South Carolina, a modest sized city with a strong Baptist community. The Bible Belt. When I was a kid, I was a "Christian" - meaning, that was what I said my religion was if anyone asked, and that was my religion because it was my parent's religion and thus I "inherited" it. This was before I realized what Christianity was. Heck, I still don't really know what Christianity is, it seems to be some composition of beliefs centered around the base idea that God had a physical son who can bring us salvation, though the denominations seem to differ significantly on the exact implications and details of this base belief. Since these beliefs are contradictory among denominations, Christianity as a whole comes off as a confusing mess.
When I was young, I did not go to church sermons, but I did attend day care at a church. Through that and my parents and perhaps television, I learned that God lets good people go to Heaven, bad people go to Hell, and he can do this because his awesome son died by crucifixion, the details of which are (censored for such young children). And since I was a "good" person (I knew this because I made good grades in school and generally did what my parents told, and I was not a murderer or a thief or what have you), I was going to get to go to Heaven. Yay! Lucky me! I even have memories arguing with my friends what Heaven was like. One of my friends agreed with me that Heaven would become like whatever you want it to, our logic being that living in Heaven is supposed to be the happiest experience you've ever felt, so whatever you fathom that would make you happier would already be true. My other two friends said that that was silly, that Heaven was what it was and we could not change it, believing that nothing we could imagine would make us as happy as Heaven already is.
Time passed, stuff happened, I turned fourteen and my parents started taking me to church for the first time. Turns out now that the whole "salvation by good deeds" bit that I blindly believed wasn't "really" how it works - although why they expected me to start blindly believing a new unproven system when the one they had been feeding me for fourteen years was a lie is beyond me. Hitler could be in Heaven if he accepted Christ, while an atheist who gives her life to save a school bus of burning children could be in Hell if she never did. Christianity sickened me, and Christians disappointed me for believing such garbage. I started to realize that there never was proof for anything religious I believed, and though I can talk with relative clarity about the topic now, the transition was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Much worse than the recent layoff, heart surgery, and loss of my grandmother that I have had to deal with this summer - and trust me, this hasn't been easy.
Not knowing how to handle this newfound information (misinformation?), I started getting grumpy at church. My parents did nothing to try and figure out why I was grumpy (honestly because I didn't know what to say or do, but felt that I must try something); instead, they got mad at me and scolded me, making me feel even worse. I was a rational outcast in a land of fools, and no one - not even my own parents - would listen.
It was with these horrendous memories that I have spent the weeks thinking about how I would tell something to my dad when the time came. At my other grandmother's funeral last year, the pastor took time toward the end of the service to ask everyone to hang their heads in prayer and, if they hadn't already, ask Jesus Christ into their hearts. I was not expecting this, and my anger reached about as high as it had ever been. Here is a guy whose profession depends on the belief of others using my grandmother's funeral as a commercial slot for his religion, trying to nab people at their weakest moment for conversion. It was outright disgusting, lower than I ever expected he would sink, and I spent the rest of the funeral in paralyzing rage.
I wanted to tell my dad that I would not go to another funeral if it was going to be held by a Baptist pastor. I feared doing so, as my dad is a Baptist, and has never shown much patience toward my feelings on the matter. But he seems to have mellowed as he aged, so I was hoping for a somewhat calm reception of my statement. Tonight I was tested; I got the news that there will be a funeral soon, and after several minutes of hesitating, making small talk with him about how I could fly out and back without missing my first day at my new job, I finally told him how I felt. Know how long it took before he made an angry retort? If you guessed right after I finished explaining things, you give him too much credit. He actually started before I had finished stuttering my ideas out, as if he knew where I was going after just a few words. I won't repeat what he said here, as he later apologized for saying it and explained that he was just stressed out (an apology that I appreciate, but which may not be enough for forgiveness - I haven't decided yet). I just needed to vent, and I wanted to lead into something very important to me.
In case it hasn't been made clear, I am not a Christian. I am not religious. I don't know if I am an Atheist or an Agnostic, and I don't understand why I have to blanket myself under one of those labels - do you call yourself a particular phrase because you do not believe in Santa Claus? I am not sure why, but I feel pain that my father has always shown such indirect anger toward me for this. I thought by now I would be strong enough to not care what he thinks, and it honestly baffles me that I apparently still do.
I want to have a "believe and let believe" attitude toward Christianity, under the assumption that they have a right to their beliefs and are not causing me harm. But how can I have such an attitude when I feel such pain, when I have been told that I deserve the worst punishment possible no less than history's worst villains by those I love at a fragile age? How can I feel complacent when Christians vote, yet their beliefs are bound to and constructed from an unproven, unscientific, unethical, self-contradictory book that was written hundreds of years ago by a far less educated society?
How can I feel calm when I can not escape this hell on earth, even at the funeral of my relatives?
My dad called tonight, a few hours ago, to tell me the news that this is probably her last night. It was a moment I expected for at least a couple of months, a moment I dreaded, a moment I rehearsed, keeping myself up at night - but not for the reason you probably think. I dreaded it because he is a religious person, and I am not.
A Little Background
I am currently living in Santa Clara, California, a technology hub in a liberal state. Silicon Valley. I grew up in Spartanburg, South Carolina, a modest sized city with a strong Baptist community. The Bible Belt. When I was a kid, I was a "Christian" - meaning, that was what I said my religion was if anyone asked, and that was my religion because it was my parent's religion and thus I "inherited" it. This was before I realized what Christianity was. Heck, I still don't really know what Christianity is, it seems to be some composition of beliefs centered around the base idea that God had a physical son who can bring us salvation, though the denominations seem to differ significantly on the exact implications and details of this base belief. Since these beliefs are contradictory among denominations, Christianity as a whole comes off as a confusing mess.
When I was young, I did not go to church sermons, but I did attend day care at a church. Through that and my parents and perhaps television, I learned that God lets good people go to Heaven, bad people go to Hell, and he can do this because his awesome son died by crucifixion, the details of which are (censored for such young children). And since I was a "good" person (I knew this because I made good grades in school and generally did what my parents told, and I was not a murderer or a thief or what have you), I was going to get to go to Heaven. Yay! Lucky me! I even have memories arguing with my friends what Heaven was like. One of my friends agreed with me that Heaven would become like whatever you want it to, our logic being that living in Heaven is supposed to be the happiest experience you've ever felt, so whatever you fathom that would make you happier would already be true. My other two friends said that that was silly, that Heaven was what it was and we could not change it, believing that nothing we could imagine would make us as happy as Heaven already is.
Time passed, stuff happened, I turned fourteen and my parents started taking me to church for the first time. Turns out now that the whole "salvation by good deeds" bit that I blindly believed wasn't "really" how it works - although why they expected me to start blindly believing a new unproven system when the one they had been feeding me for fourteen years was a lie is beyond me. Hitler could be in Heaven if he accepted Christ, while an atheist who gives her life to save a school bus of burning children could be in Hell if she never did. Christianity sickened me, and Christians disappointed me for believing such garbage. I started to realize that there never was proof for anything religious I believed, and though I can talk with relative clarity about the topic now, the transition was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Much worse than the recent layoff, heart surgery, and loss of my grandmother that I have had to deal with this summer - and trust me, this hasn't been easy.
Not knowing how to handle this newfound information (misinformation?), I started getting grumpy at church. My parents did nothing to try and figure out why I was grumpy (honestly because I didn't know what to say or do, but felt that I must try something); instead, they got mad at me and scolded me, making me feel even worse. I was a rational outcast in a land of fools, and no one - not even my own parents - would listen.
What Happened Tonight
It was with these horrendous memories that I have spent the weeks thinking about how I would tell something to my dad when the time came. At my other grandmother's funeral last year, the pastor took time toward the end of the service to ask everyone to hang their heads in prayer and, if they hadn't already, ask Jesus Christ into their hearts. I was not expecting this, and my anger reached about as high as it had ever been. Here is a guy whose profession depends on the belief of others using my grandmother's funeral as a commercial slot for his religion, trying to nab people at their weakest moment for conversion. It was outright disgusting, lower than I ever expected he would sink, and I spent the rest of the funeral in paralyzing rage.
I wanted to tell my dad that I would not go to another funeral if it was going to be held by a Baptist pastor. I feared doing so, as my dad is a Baptist, and has never shown much patience toward my feelings on the matter. But he seems to have mellowed as he aged, so I was hoping for a somewhat calm reception of my statement. Tonight I was tested; I got the news that there will be a funeral soon, and after several minutes of hesitating, making small talk with him about how I could fly out and back without missing my first day at my new job, I finally told him how I felt. Know how long it took before he made an angry retort? If you guessed right after I finished explaining things, you give him too much credit. He actually started before I had finished stuttering my ideas out, as if he knew where I was going after just a few words. I won't repeat what he said here, as he later apologized for saying it and explained that he was just stressed out (an apology that I appreciate, but which may not be enough for forgiveness - I haven't decided yet). I just needed to vent, and I wanted to lead into something very important to me.
The point
In case it hasn't been made clear, I am not a Christian. I am not religious. I don't know if I am an Atheist or an Agnostic, and I don't understand why I have to blanket myself under one of those labels - do you call yourself a particular phrase because you do not believe in Santa Claus? I am not sure why, but I feel pain that my father has always shown such indirect anger toward me for this. I thought by now I would be strong enough to not care what he thinks, and it honestly baffles me that I apparently still do.
I want to have a "believe and let believe" attitude toward Christianity, under the assumption that they have a right to their beliefs and are not causing me harm. But how can I have such an attitude when I feel such pain, when I have been told that I deserve the worst punishment possible no less than history's worst villains by those I love at a fragile age? How can I feel complacent when Christians vote, yet their beliefs are bound to and constructed from an unproven, unscientific, unethical, self-contradictory book that was written hundreds of years ago by a far less educated society?
How can I feel calm when I can not escape this hell on earth, even at the funeral of my relatives?
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Rant: Speeding
I was driving back from McDonald's earlier today when it happened; someone else turned onto the road behind me, driving in the same direction as me, in the same lane. Okay, this is a pretty common and innocuous event, but I always feel a bit of angst in this situation. Angst over what, you ask? That this person will get in the other lane to pass me.
I know, I know, it's a pretty silly thing to get angsty about. It's just something I've been noticing lately, something that I've been consciously looking at, because I am a self-conscious guy. Whenever I see a vehicle take up a certain portion of my rear view mirror, I suddenly focus enough mental effort on said vehicle to bring it up into my conscious awareness. I play a game with them. The game is called, “Are you going to pass me?” What I do is I check my speedometer, and make sure I'm going precisely the speed limit. If these people get in the other lane and travel faster than me for an extended duration, then they are speeding and they lose the game. That they don't realize they are participating in this “game” is beside the point; it is just a rhetorical device anyway.
More people lose this game than win it. I play it on small streets where there is little other traffic to affect the outcome, not on large highways or interstates. I have even started upping my speed to five miles per hour over the limit in an attempt to lessen the temptation and possibly get more winners. As far as I can tell, this has had very little effect. In my utterly unprofessional, poorly defined, unrecorded samples of this “game”, it seems that people are about as likely to pass me when I am going five miles per hour over the speed limit as when I am going the speed limit. And this pisses me the fuck off.
I'm not sure why it does, it just does. Somehow, every time a vehicles passes me, it's like they are saying that their time is more valuable than my time. That increasing my own speed seems to have no effect on this bizarre conspiracy only worsens the emotional impact by implanting a sense of helplessness into my mind. This is utterly irrational on my part, it's more of a reflex emotion than a rational response. After all, it is up to me to decide how valuable my time is, and spend less time driving (by driving faster) if I feel it is worth the ticket and safety risk. That others have a slightly different evaluation function for their driving habits should not bother me, except that it somehow does, on a subconscious level that I can't seem to breach without sufficient effort (effort that my own evaluation functions have yet to justify).
Of course, it did not take too long for me to realize a certain bias in this “experiment”, namely that for these people to pull up so close behind me in the first place they must already be going faster than me, so of course they are likely to want to pass me, finding my current speed insufficient. The people who wouldn't be likely to pass me (because they are going at or below my current speed limit) will never catch up with me to even begin playing the game. So unfortunately, I have developed a little game that is a bit inclined to attract the type of people who would lose it. Perfect for casinos, but a little unsatisfying for my causes.
To account for this, I began playing an advanced version of the game. I go the speed limit, and when I notice someone pulling up behind me I speed up somewhat gradually to about five miles per hour over the speed limit. Thus I have enticed a larger variety of drivers into this game while adjusting the difficulty in their favor. And still, still, still they fucking pass me, so very often. I began to wonder if they even realize that I am speeding up for them, or if they already got it into their head that they are going to pass me and have gone into autopilot, have reached the point of no return, unaware that I am going a little faster, perhaps even as fast as they were before they caught up with me. I wonder how much faster I have to go before the majority of drivers will notice what's going on and stop auto-drafting me. Might be worth experimenting with, except that I fear this level won't be reached without flirting with dangerous speeds.
Eh, I would be stretching things to say that there is. There really isn't a point to any of this, at least not a good point; that's why I labeled it a rant. But I am curious; if anyone reading this habitually speeds, may I ask why?
Why do you speed?
I know, I know, it's a pretty silly thing to get angsty about. It's just something I've been noticing lately, something that I've been consciously looking at, because I am a self-conscious guy. Whenever I see a vehicle take up a certain portion of my rear view mirror, I suddenly focus enough mental effort on said vehicle to bring it up into my conscious awareness. I play a game with them. The game is called, “Are you going to pass me?” What I do is I check my speedometer, and make sure I'm going precisely the speed limit. If these people get in the other lane and travel faster than me for an extended duration, then they are speeding and they lose the game. That they don't realize they are participating in this “game” is beside the point; it is just a rhetorical device anyway.
More people lose this game than win it. I play it on small streets where there is little other traffic to affect the outcome, not on large highways or interstates. I have even started upping my speed to five miles per hour over the limit in an attempt to lessen the temptation and possibly get more winners. As far as I can tell, this has had very little effect. In my utterly unprofessional, poorly defined, unrecorded samples of this “game”, it seems that people are about as likely to pass me when I am going five miles per hour over the speed limit as when I am going the speed limit. And this pisses me the fuck off.
I'm not sure why it does, it just does. Somehow, every time a vehicles passes me, it's like they are saying that their time is more valuable than my time. That increasing my own speed seems to have no effect on this bizarre conspiracy only worsens the emotional impact by implanting a sense of helplessness into my mind. This is utterly irrational on my part, it's more of a reflex emotion than a rational response. After all, it is up to me to decide how valuable my time is, and spend less time driving (by driving faster) if I feel it is worth the ticket and safety risk. That others have a slightly different evaluation function for their driving habits should not bother me, except that it somehow does, on a subconscious level that I can't seem to breach without sufficient effort (effort that my own evaluation functions have yet to justify).
A surprising development!
Of course, it did not take too long for me to realize a certain bias in this “experiment”, namely that for these people to pull up so close behind me in the first place they must already be going faster than me, so of course they are likely to want to pass me, finding my current speed insufficient. The people who wouldn't be likely to pass me (because they are going at or below my current speed limit) will never catch up with me to even begin playing the game. So unfortunately, I have developed a little game that is a bit inclined to attract the type of people who would lose it. Perfect for casinos, but a little unsatisfying for my causes.
To account for this, I began playing an advanced version of the game. I go the speed limit, and when I notice someone pulling up behind me I speed up somewhat gradually to about five miles per hour over the speed limit. Thus I have enticed a larger variety of drivers into this game while adjusting the difficulty in their favor. And still, still, still they fucking pass me, so very often. I began to wonder if they even realize that I am speeding up for them, or if they already got it into their head that they are going to pass me and have gone into autopilot, have reached the point of no return, unaware that I am going a little faster, perhaps even as fast as they were before they caught up with me. I wonder how much faster I have to go before the majority of drivers will notice what's going on and stop auto-drafting me. Might be worth experimenting with, except that I fear this level won't be reached without flirting with dangerous speeds.
There's a point to this?
Eh, I would be stretching things to say that there is. There really isn't a point to any of this, at least not a good point; that's why I labeled it a rant. But I am curious; if anyone reading this habitually speeds, may I ask why?
Why do you speed?
- Is it because you feel the posted speed limit is actually lower than the logistical "safe" speed limit?
- Is it because you feel that you are a better driver than the average person, and thus "deserve" to go a little faster than the average driver since your skills and reflexes will make up for the lost safety?
- Is it because you live nearby and know these roads better than the average person, so driving a little faster is reasonable?
- Is it because you notice that most other people speed? If so:
- Do you speed because it feels "more dangerous" to go slower than everyone around you?
- Do you speed because you are scared you will anger people behind you who want to go faster?
- Do you speed because you want to anyway, and seeing others do it means you are less likely to be singled out and ticketed?
- Is it to save time? Or because you often find yourself running late (somewhat related to saving time)?
- Is it because you don't think you'll get caught?
- Is it mostly just because you went this speed yesterday, and the day before, and it's just easier to keep doing it as long as it works?
- Safety?
- To avoid getting ticketed?
- To avoid negative social reaction from your peers or those around you?
- Moral objectivism (it's just the Right Thing To Do)?
- Is it mostly just because you went this speed yesterday, and the day before, and it's just easier to keep doing it as long as it works?
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Rant: Where's My Vacation?
I promised myself I would go easy on the rants in this blog, and I never intended for my second post to become one. But man did this holiday season just reek of overcast for me.
I took time off of work from the 23rd of December through the 1st of January. I was not looking forward to the flight home. I have never been afraid of airplanes, but I despise the demeaning atmosphere that surrounds putting up with security. It did not help matters when I bumped against the metal detector after ‘passing’ the test (woot, I haven't contracted Muslim!) and had to walk back through to silence the insessent whining of the alarm which seemed to say, “freedom ain't dead buddy, it just never was.” I don't speak in black and white, so I won't say that the terrorists have won — but they have undeniably succeeded at injecting something tangible, long term, and quite negative into the veins of this country. Gosh, if you call this something ‘terror’, then you might be tempted to say that they accomplished what they set out to do, which when converted to the parlance of games might read something like “The terrorists have won.” But I won't say that, it's getting trite.
The week I spent at home with my friends and family was actually quite enjoyable, less stressful than I feared. This essentially negates the power of the title of this post, but I'm keeping it because it sounds nifty-keen in my mind's ears. Christmas is just a commercialized bastardization of a religious celebration that I do not adhere to anyway (a duplet of negatives which seem to cancel each other out, leaving arithmetic apathy in my heart for the whole ordeal), but if this is the time of the year when I can most easily be with the people I love, I am going to try my hardest to make it back east.
The real problem began when I flew back home (my current home, not my hometown). My car would not start, and with scarcely any groceries in my apartment I can assure you this did not help me look forward to the two days I would have before work to start my real vacation, a period of R&R by myself, for myself. For starters, I was charged $75 to get a professional jump start. A professional jump start is just like a regular jump start except the pro arrives in an important looking pickup truck, does it a little bit faster and probably a lot safer, and then charges $75 for it. I asked the guy if it would be okay for me to pay with a check as I did not pocket a lot of cash in preparation for this and could not make it to the ATM atm. He noticed my foreign area code like a secret agent trained to spot things like that and inquired about the Boiling Springs address on my check book, I explained that I had just moved out here not too long ago and he said he'd take my check (with my driver's license number and expiration, phone number, and mother's favorite color for good measure written on the front).
My car was dead again the next day. I did not want to shell out another seventy-five thin pieces of paper approximating my value as a human being, so I went to the leasing office to see if they had any jumper cables. Besides, it was time to fork over the $1,435+ that I have to pay for my one bedroom apartment with no washer or dryer, which is $400 more than the two bedroom apartment with a washer and dryer that I split with my roommate in Atlanta (California here I am, ready for another sham). The leasing office was closed as it was New Year's Day, so I turned around to go back to my apartment. I needed a key to get back in the gate, and as it was a gate that I rarely use (I usually have my car and use the car entrance), I found myself embarrassingly running through every key that I had to try and get in. Finding no luck from any of them, I had to slide in behind a guy leaving the apartment complex. I knew that I lived there and was not looking to muck up trouble, but I also knew that he didn't know that and I appreciate him showing the kindness to not only let me in but vocally ask if I needed in and hold the gate open for me. I thanked him and entered quickly, keeping my head down sheepishly as if I had just done something wrong: “The name's Jeff, I smuggle bombs onto planes, practice check fraud with highway repairmen, and sneak into housing developments that I have no right to be in. Happy New Years!”
I ordered pizza for delivery ($25, yeesh) and waited until the next morning when the leasing office would be open to get my car straightened out. I arrived bright and early. Let me tell you, they had no problem accepting that rental check, but when I asked if I could get a jump start the lady behind the desk gave me this odd look (like she started to break out of that fake smile that people in that position wear everyday to emote sympathy but could no longer find the subroutine to do so in her mind) and said, “I'm sorry, we can't do that. It's against our policy.” If ever in my life my jaw opened far enough to sweep the floor upon which I stood like out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, it was at that very moment. I even asked her, in all seriousness, “You're kidding, right?”, waiting for her to laugh and go get maintenance. I find myself accurately cynical about public service positions and the quality of said services, but this level of bone-headery went completely under my anticipatory radar. She did not laugh, did nothing of the sort. My dad confirmed what I presumed to be the reason for this god-awful policy: that they don't want to be held liable in the event that my car is damaged during the jump start. After having been a cashier at Winn Dixie for two years, I have become aware firsthand that peons like her have a sort of “I'm too low-level to help/care” immunity that prevents any further debate to blossom into something productive, so I just left as politely as I could. After asking one person leaving my apartment when I did if they had jumper cables (they did not), I bit a familiar bullet and called the tow-guy to give me another jump. “Didn't take it and get the battery looked at yesterday, I see?” “No sir, I tried my hardest to carry her there but either she has gained some weight since our union or I've lost some muscle.” Another seventy-five dollar check, DL# PN# and DNA sample, and I was running again.
I went straight to the nearest Sears, already late for my first day back to work, and wanted to bite the air so hard as to hurt it when I saw that it was merely an appliance outlet and not one of their auto repair places. I went inside anyway and asked the guy behind the counter if he could point me in the right direction. I could not have dreamt a friendlier response; after a good fifteen minutes of trying to find the closest Sears auto outlet, fighting a failing inter/intra net connection, he advised me to see a non-Sears expert rumored to be of high quality. I thanked him and left, half expecting my car to fail me in the parking lot. It turned on thankfully, and I decided I better go to work.
At lunch, a co-worker agreed to help give me a ride when I finally dropped my car off at a real auto repair place. I was told it would take an hour and a half to fix by another man exhibiting a level of amiability toward strangers that I thought was extinct in our digital, distrust-or-face-regret society. A few hours later, I received a phone call saying it wouldn't be finished until tomorrow — needs a new battery, some new transmission fluid (specially suited for my car, naturally), and something called a “dog bone mount” is cracked in my engine, and that I can expect to part with another $300. I took the light rail home tonight, at least as close as I could, and walked the remaining fiteen minutes. I actually enjoyed the walk, I don't do that as much as I should, but I did not enjoy the sinking feeling I got in my gut as I approached my apartment and realized I did not have the gate remote to get into my apartment (left it in my car) and did not know which key on my possession, if any, would open the walk-in gate. I thought I heard a car pulling out of my apartment complex, and sped up to try and walk in through the gate behind it. It was parking; no such luck. I slowed down when I saw a couple out walking their dog, about to exit through the walk-in gate that I was going to try and enter. Unfortunately, they slowed down when they saw me, and simply stood back a few feet as if teasing me, asking me to prove that I lived there.
Fuck.
Knowing exactly how it was going to turn out, I pulled out my keys and started jabbing them into the lock (they give you a lot of keys here, maybe that accounts for the ass-fuck pricing). Nope, nope, ah it went in! — but won't turn. And putting on this show for the young couple before me did not help to alleviate my stress. “It's cool, I'm not trying to break into your west-coast suburban utopia and threaten your kids or pets, I'm just riding this downward spiral to the bitter end.”
Somehow I made it into my apartment tonight, and I don't think I did anything wrong despite having distrust breathed in my face several times over the holidays (smells like garlic and pickles, if you were wondering). It is interesting to me that, despite having my car break down and having to face a fear of being stranded and unable to obtain nourishment if need be, the worst (and best) parts of this ordeal could be traced back to the people I had to interact with. Whether it is the friendly guy behind the counter who's “been there before” and willing to help solely because, somehow, trusting people still comes naturally to him, or the soccer mom whose finger is already on the mace because there is the slightest chance that you will pose a threat to her offspring and you just don't seem to belong in her habitat, we tend to have an amazing dependence on and responsiveness to the attitudes and opinions of those around us. I'm still not certain which is sadder: the number of people who naturally distrust others, or the fact that we live in a world where such distrust is honestly warranted. Here's hoping that someday we can overcome human nature to become something more than just human; something called humane.
Oh, and don't wait until the last minute to get shit fixed in your car.
I took time off of work from the 23rd of December through the 1st of January. I was not looking forward to the flight home. I have never been afraid of airplanes, but I despise the demeaning atmosphere that surrounds putting up with security. It did not help matters when I bumped against the metal detector after ‘passing’ the test (woot, I haven't contracted Muslim!) and had to walk back through to silence the insessent whining of the alarm which seemed to say, “freedom ain't dead buddy, it just never was.” I don't speak in black and white, so I won't say that the terrorists have won — but they have undeniably succeeded at injecting something tangible, long term, and quite negative into the veins of this country. Gosh, if you call this something ‘terror’, then you might be tempted to say that they accomplished what they set out to do, which when converted to the parlance of games might read something like “The terrorists have won.” But I won't say that, it's getting trite.
The week I spent at home with my friends and family was actually quite enjoyable, less stressful than I feared. This essentially negates the power of the title of this post, but I'm keeping it because it sounds nifty-keen in my mind's ears. Christmas is just a commercialized bastardization of a religious celebration that I do not adhere to anyway (a duplet of negatives which seem to cancel each other out, leaving arithmetic apathy in my heart for the whole ordeal), but if this is the time of the year when I can most easily be with the people I love, I am going to try my hardest to make it back east.
The real problem began when I flew back home (my current home, not my hometown). My car would not start, and with scarcely any groceries in my apartment I can assure you this did not help me look forward to the two days I would have before work to start my real vacation, a period of R&R by myself, for myself. For starters, I was charged $75 to get a professional jump start. A professional jump start is just like a regular jump start except the pro arrives in an important looking pickup truck, does it a little bit faster and probably a lot safer, and then charges $75 for it. I asked the guy if it would be okay for me to pay with a check as I did not pocket a lot of cash in preparation for this and could not make it to the ATM atm. He noticed my foreign area code like a secret agent trained to spot things like that and inquired about the Boiling Springs address on my check book, I explained that I had just moved out here not too long ago and he said he'd take my check (with my driver's license number and expiration, phone number, and mother's favorite color for good measure written on the front).
My car was dead again the next day. I did not want to shell out another seventy-five thin pieces of paper approximating my value as a human being, so I went to the leasing office to see if they had any jumper cables. Besides, it was time to fork over the $1,435+ that I have to pay for my one bedroom apartment with no washer or dryer, which is $400 more than the two bedroom apartment with a washer and dryer that I split with my roommate in Atlanta (California here I am, ready for another sham). The leasing office was closed as it was New Year's Day, so I turned around to go back to my apartment. I needed a key to get back in the gate, and as it was a gate that I rarely use (I usually have my car and use the car entrance), I found myself embarrassingly running through every key that I had to try and get in. Finding no luck from any of them, I had to slide in behind a guy leaving the apartment complex. I knew that I lived there and was not looking to muck up trouble, but I also knew that he didn't know that and I appreciate him showing the kindness to not only let me in but vocally ask if I needed in and hold the gate open for me. I thanked him and entered quickly, keeping my head down sheepishly as if I had just done something wrong: “The name's Jeff, I smuggle bombs onto planes, practice check fraud with highway repairmen, and sneak into housing developments that I have no right to be in. Happy New Years!”
I ordered pizza for delivery ($25, yeesh) and waited until the next morning when the leasing office would be open to get my car straightened out. I arrived bright and early. Let me tell you, they had no problem accepting that rental check, but when I asked if I could get a jump start the lady behind the desk gave me this odd look (like she started to break out of that fake smile that people in that position wear everyday to emote sympathy but could no longer find the subroutine to do so in her mind) and said, “I'm sorry, we can't do that. It's against our policy.” If ever in my life my jaw opened far enough to sweep the floor upon which I stood like out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, it was at that very moment. I even asked her, in all seriousness, “You're kidding, right?”, waiting for her to laugh and go get maintenance. I find myself accurately cynical about public service positions and the quality of said services, but this level of bone-headery went completely under my anticipatory radar. She did not laugh, did nothing of the sort. My dad confirmed what I presumed to be the reason for this god-awful policy: that they don't want to be held liable in the event that my car is damaged during the jump start. After having been a cashier at Winn Dixie for two years, I have become aware firsthand that peons like her have a sort of “I'm too low-level to help/care” immunity that prevents any further debate to blossom into something productive, so I just left as politely as I could. After asking one person leaving my apartment when I did if they had jumper cables (they did not), I bit a familiar bullet and called the tow-guy to give me another jump. “Didn't take it and get the battery looked at yesterday, I see?” “No sir, I tried my hardest to carry her there but either she has gained some weight since our union or I've lost some muscle.” Another seventy-five dollar check, DL# PN# and DNA sample, and I was running again.
I went straight to the nearest Sears, already late for my first day back to work, and wanted to bite the air so hard as to hurt it when I saw that it was merely an appliance outlet and not one of their auto repair places. I went inside anyway and asked the guy behind the counter if he could point me in the right direction. I could not have dreamt a friendlier response; after a good fifteen minutes of trying to find the closest Sears auto outlet, fighting a failing inter/intra net connection, he advised me to see a non-Sears expert rumored to be of high quality. I thanked him and left, half expecting my car to fail me in the parking lot. It turned on thankfully, and I decided I better go to work.
At lunch, a co-worker agreed to help give me a ride when I finally dropped my car off at a real auto repair place. I was told it would take an hour and a half to fix by another man exhibiting a level of amiability toward strangers that I thought was extinct in our digital, distrust-or-face-regret society. A few hours later, I received a phone call saying it wouldn't be finished until tomorrow — needs a new battery, some new transmission fluid (specially suited for my car, naturally), and something called a “dog bone mount” is cracked in my engine, and that I can expect to part with another $300. I took the light rail home tonight, at least as close as I could, and walked the remaining fiteen minutes. I actually enjoyed the walk, I don't do that as much as I should, but I did not enjoy the sinking feeling I got in my gut as I approached my apartment and realized I did not have the gate remote to get into my apartment (left it in my car) and did not know which key on my possession, if any, would open the walk-in gate. I thought I heard a car pulling out of my apartment complex, and sped up to try and walk in through the gate behind it. It was parking; no such luck. I slowed down when I saw a couple out walking their dog, about to exit through the walk-in gate that I was going to try and enter. Unfortunately, they slowed down when they saw me, and simply stood back a few feet as if teasing me, asking me to prove that I lived there.
Fuck.
Knowing exactly how it was going to turn out, I pulled out my keys and started jabbing them into the lock (they give you a lot of keys here, maybe that accounts for the ass-fuck pricing). Nope, nope, ah it went in! — but won't turn. And putting on this show for the young couple before me did not help to alleviate my stress. “It's cool, I'm not trying to break into your west-coast suburban utopia and threaten your kids or pets, I'm just riding this downward spiral to the bitter end.”
Somehow I made it into my apartment tonight, and I don't think I did anything wrong despite having distrust breathed in my face several times over the holidays (smells like garlic and pickles, if you were wondering). It is interesting to me that, despite having my car break down and having to face a fear of being stranded and unable to obtain nourishment if need be, the worst (and best) parts of this ordeal could be traced back to the people I had to interact with. Whether it is the friendly guy behind the counter who's “been there before” and willing to help solely because, somehow, trusting people still comes naturally to him, or the soccer mom whose finger is already on the mace because there is the slightest chance that you will pose a threat to her offspring and you just don't seem to belong in her habitat, we tend to have an amazing dependence on and responsiveness to the attitudes and opinions of those around us. I'm still not certain which is sadder: the number of people who naturally distrust others, or the fact that we live in a world where such distrust is honestly warranted. Here's hoping that someday we can overcome human nature to become something more than just human; something called humane.
Oh, and don't wait until the last minute to get shit fixed in your car.
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