Signal Or Noise
Seems these days all I want to do is watch the world burn.
I’m all out of matches though.
Impossible to Know How to Feel.
So, I really hurt someone on Monday.
Physically.
Emotionally I hurt anyone stupid enough to get close to me all the time. I’m too distant and lost in my own thoughts. That’s a whole other issue.
The thing is, I damaged someone physically.
I was at training, regular class had ended and I was going to get water before doing some free practice. Someone came up behind me and tried to choke me. I got them off fast and turned to face them. They started punching me. I took one of their fists and started to turn it back on itself. This is an incredibly painful thing do. They just kept punching me with their free hand, so I increased the pressure of the control until they finally felt it through whatever it was going through their head that inspired the attack. They finally went to the ground and tapped out as if it was just a normal bit of training and they had just been pinned. Not a word had been spoken by them to this point. I just continued off the mats to go get some water because I was now furious and upset. i didn’t trust myself as to what I’d do next. I knew I had just applied pressure well past the point where tendon damage had to be done though. There was no doubt that their hand was now not in very good shape.
By the time I was collected enough to come out they had gone to change, and left soon after still without a word.
Everyone there it turns out had witnessed it. It was just so strange it had riveted everyone. No one tried to step in to end it, they just stood and watched.
They wanted to know why that person had chosen to attack me, and to do so from behind. I didn’t know. I hadn’t exchanged any words with them in weeks as far as I could remember. I haven’t trained with them in ages. I didn’t really know them at all to be honest, they were just another person there to me. I had only neutral memories of them, and any discussions with them I could recall were all neutral.
I don’t know why they attacked me, and everyone watching said it was an attack. It wasn’t play, it was viscous and my control on their hand should have dropped them long before it did. I was told by the head teacher there that I had comported myself very well, that I appeared to do what I could to not provoke them, and to just end the attack, even letting them continue to punch me and to use a control that should have stopped it instead of a powerful counterattack. I was told that I only scaled up my response as it was clear that I had to, instead of starting full bore.
I still damaged someone, I still committed a slow and intentional violent action. I do not feel better because I could have done much worse damage to them but didn’t. I feel I have damaged someone, not good that I only damaged them a little.
I still have no idea why I was attacked. They couldn’t have hurt me, they were punching me as hard as they could and it was not enough to damage me. Perhaps I could have just told them to stop. Better would have been if someone else had come and pulled them off and we could have found out why. Instead I was left to end it how I could (and I think I may have chosen wrong) and then when it was over, still, no one did anything.
I don’t know. I take great delight in being a thug there, but it’s for fun. I don’t do anything the other person can’t safely cope with. I’m there for a simulation of violence. At the end we all had fun and we all remain friends. I do not try to make enemies, I try to have everyone have fun. I like that people consider training with me to be a challenge, but, not something to be avoided.
I’m not ok with what they did, I’m not ok with no one else doing anything. I’m not ok with me.
Posted without tags as I don’t want to widely broadcast my failings as a person.
So much to say, no time to get it clearly written. Instead I present a human who never had trouble in communicating volumes in a few words. Yet another tribute to Christopher Hitchens.
The Sleeping Mind Is Desire’s Playground
I had a fun dream last night. I was hanging out with Wil Wheaton, and I was going to lend him a book. We went to my place to get it and ended up making out a bunch.
Yeah. Like you wouldn’t have too given the opportunity!
And yes, it did totally turn me on and STILL does now.
This dream brought to you by serotonin precursors taken an hour before bed (making it hyper real seeming).
Real content is prepared in draft form, but I won’t get to finishing it before the end of the uni term.
Signal < Noise
School year is almost done. As I go to higher level courses I feel less self conscious about my age.
First year is almost all kids, second year on there are a lot of mature and returning students. It’s not so bad.
Otherwise I would just like to say that Philip K Dick still wrote the original stories or inspired the best scifi and speculative fiction movies ever made. Also, his stories were always way better. I bring this up because, well, you can never have too much Dick.
This statement is only true for contexts in which it is true and is specifically excluded from all contexts in which it is not true.
Fandom
So, I’m not exactly hip.
Just by using that phrase I have proven my own hypothesis.
I really am not very immersed in pop culture, so, it takes a long time for me to notice something.
I’d finally figured I should find out what The Hunger Games was about, since it might be something I’d enjoy too. Looked it up, read about it, a few seconds into reading the premise it was clear to me it was a rip off of Battle Royal. I was not alone in noticing that I quickly found out.
So, fine, you did a localization of Battle Royal. Original work or ideas in the western world are really rare now, so, no shame in that. Still, don’t pull that nonsense about “Oh, it’s just a coincidence!”, no one believed that when Lucas said it about Kurosawa’s work, no one believed it when Steve Jobs used to claim that Pixar wasn’t massively inspired by Miyazaki, and no one believes The Hunger Games are not based off Battle Royal. I’m sure it’s a bit different and will go in a different direction in the end, so, why not be honest and admit your source inspiration.
Long ago I loved this game called Alpha Centauri. It was clear to me it was ripped off of the setting of the best Frank Herbert (and Bill Ransom) book you’ve never read, The Jesus Incident. Sure enough, in the manual it was mentioned that many of the players have probably noticed that the world was the world Pandora from said book, and if the player didn’t know that, quickly run out and find a copy and read it because it is so damn good. Then, years later, James Cameron lifts the setting (but not the story, he stole the setting from The Jesus Incident but the story told in it was ripped off from elsewhere) and denies it. I mean, he even called it Pandora, it wasn’t even subtle, and he looked the world in the eye and lied, saying that no, that was not the case. Well, yeah, don’t do that. Admit where you were inspired and let people get inspired by that same source too. They end up enjoying your work more because they get more depth and get to see how other artists face the questions the setting raises, or how other artists find different aspects to focus on all together. Stories, like all knowledge, thrive with depth and context. It is not the other way around.
Still, while we are on Battle Royal (which, well, this isn’t about anything really, is it), I used to watch Battle Royal about once a month, with the same friend each time. We had heard the sequel wasn’t too good, but one day decided to watch it anyway. We felt so betrayed by how bad it was neither of us has watched the first one again since. I was honestly offended Beat Takeshi allowed his name or image to be associated with it at all. So, yeah, I obviously take this stuff way too seriously.
Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.
—Alan Turing (1912 – 1954)
John Safran vs. God end of episode bit on atheism. He’s the same guy who did the atheists door knocking in Salt Lake City video (from the same series).
