Monday, November 3, 2008

to hell with Jack Nicholson

A fellow in the comments section recently expressed his unhappiness about me bagging out gamers. But he was not a jerk. He was alright, this fellow. He just didn't care to be shat on for the fact that he liked playing this game. Fair enough.


And truth be known, I've played a few computer games. I periodically grooved on shooting galaga invaders, doom monsters, and WWII Germans. But that was then, this is now. I'm on a different gig now.

And you're on the gig too. If you're here (unsuspecting google arrivals aside) you're in amongst this thing. In short, you have become aware of the disparity between what you are told in the media and the facts-of-the-matter. I'm sure you can dig it.

I don't care if your focus is Palestine, corporations, the Fed, the Roman Church, the CFR, the Constitution, the Holocaust, whatever. If you get that any one of these things is being misused or misrepresented, then you have already set foot in the camp. If you have used the internet to find out the truth of the matter, you're 'it'. Welcome to the resistance, ha ha.

Whatever views you hold, you have conceded that people should pursue the truth. Which is to say, the truth beyond that which is fed to us in the mainstream media. All Hail Thee! You cherish the truth and seek to arrive more nearly at it. Don't shy away from describing yourself in this fashion or, further, in attempting to embody it. It is a good and noble sentiment and I say this without any media-inspired post-modernist smirk. That the media would have us view such statements as unhip or geeky says all that needs to be said about the media, and about how, right this minute, you and I are not paying it any attention. Instead we are here on the net seeking the truth. Bully for us.

I don't have it by the way. The truth, that is. I merely search with you. (And laugh at my own jokes as I go, ha ha). If this 'truth-seeking' talk sounds religious, that's okay. I suspect that most of the people who come here are not religious or only vaguely so. Frankly I don't care either way. My searching led me to the truth of the equivalence of religions. But amongst religions, some are better, some are worse. Some do more good than harm, and vice versa. But forget the differences. Here we unite and it's the commonalities that count.

Our commonality is that we seek the truth. And we seek it outside the boundaries of control. That's us.

Here on the net, even those of us of a narrow focus find ourselves rubbing up against unlikely things. A gun nut goes to wrh and ends up reading about the USS Liberty. Excellent. The beauty of the internet as a means of seeking the truth is that it defeats the narrow focus. Me? I've had so many unlikely things turn out to be true I no longer dismiss anything.

So where were we? Oh yeah, that fellow who didn't care for me thinking poorly of games and gamers. Mind you, I'd have been him a few years ago. "Who's this jumped-up nobody bagging out games. I play them, I like them and there's nothing wrong with them." But I left that fellow behind as my focus continued widening and everything around me came up for scrutiny. I am the opposite to my bacteria-expert uncle who was declared to know 'the most about the least'. I attempt to more nearly approach the opposite, ha ha. There's no point viewing the micro without the macro.

Computer games, eh? Why not computer games? They're a micro in the macro. Oughtn't they too to be re-considered? We who seek the truth. We who wonder at things. We have no limits, or if we do, we will soon be disabused of them. But we welcome this. It is good and useful. The truth cannot be compartmentalised. It cannot be self-serving. If the things we love are shown to be false, so be it. The truth wins and the only certainty is change. Huzzah!

Let's look at this game in the macro. The big money corporate media is bullshit, yeah? Games make more money than movies, yeah? Money that big will be corporate - bankers, accountants, and other black-hearted sons-of-bitches will all climb in bed and fuck like monkeys. You know that. Movies and TV (same same), are propaganda machines right? They teach you how to think. They say the world is us-and-them. They tell us who to hate. Yes? And games differ from this how?

Hitman posits a world in which one, merely by participating, embraces the rightness of the killing of complete strangers at the say-so of others. Do we - who object to being lied to about Iraq, and the stories we were told about those-whom-we-must-kill - not object to a game that does precisely that? Like I said, if it hadn't existed the CIA or Mossad would have made it anyway.

If we're prepared to acknowledge the wickedness and misrepresentation of: health, insurance, and big pharma; GMO's, food, and starvation; politics, money, and war; of every goddamn thing, why baulk at this game? Question its rightness and if need be, let go of it. It is just another part of the enormity.

But this is no acid test. If you really want to play that game, go play it. As long as you know what it is and don't fool yourself. I smoke Champion Ruby tobacco in Zig-Zag rollies. I know the tabacco companies are wicked. I know smoking is fucked for 28,000 reasons all of which I get. But I smoke. I smoke and I get it. Do you get it?

You and me, the both of us. We're going to be ditching things or otherwise viewing them in a new light - things once cherished. We have to figure out our whole lives over again. What works, what doesn't. What's real, what's bullshit. We will not be told how to be human. We will cease defining ourselves by things that are not us. Can you dig it?

And you're in something big. There has never been a thing like this. It's growing and edging towards dangerous. It has universal appeal. There will come a tipping point when it will take over as the pre-dominant thought. It will be defined by its curiosity, its disregard for thought crime, along with its compassion and seeking of concord. All we want is the truth.

And to hell with Jack Nicholson - You can handle the truth.

21 comments:

kikz said...

nicholson...

yea, quite the analogy...

i sometimes see it.. as the awful truth..

kind of like his character in 'the shining'.


hereeeeee's johnny!


nice one noby :)

Penny said...

The gaming thing is not my forte.

Don't play them.
As for tv, again ditto.
Don't have cable, have an antenna. Can you imagine that?
An antenna!

When I tell people that, you know what the most common response is?

OMG, what do you do???

Isn't that bizarre?

What do I do?

Apparently a hell of a lot more then people sitting in front of the tv!!!

The word "truth" has become equivalent to "conspiracy theorist"
Have you noticed?
When you question 9/11, your one of those truthers! People say it as if spitting.

Truth has become the enemy. Truth gives comfort to terrorists.

Never has knowing the truth or wanting to know the truth been so maligned.

And it ain't by accident!
People need to get a life.

Not a pretend telly fantasy life.

nobody said...

Ha, I spent years without a telly. I know precisely what you are talking about.

the Silverfish said...

Good Heavens Penny, An antenna wtf's that? Damn I live in a log cabin, ok so I'm not a savage, I do have a flush toilet, a dishwasher a hot tub, and computers up to the eyeballs but I don't have a TV that is connected to anything but a beta tape player and my newly bought $20.00 dvd player. And you're right there is so much more to do than sit in front of the Idiot Box.

Oh and Nobody I have never been a games player with the exception of Chess and Go, would you believe that my first game of Monopoly was played when I was 40 years old? I felt like a fool not knowing how to play a game that everyone on this planet has played cept me.

And Oh yes I do get it, I got it a long time ago, getting it made my retirement that much easier.
P.s lay off of Jack he’s cool, and yes those in this thing CAN handle the truth. What they do with it is anyones guess.

nobody said...

Onya Fish.

Oh, Monopoly. What a horrid, horrid game. Has anyone ever seen kids play it and not end up fighting? We always did. The game should carry a label - "Warning! This game will result in your children hating each other."

Feel free to make that a metaphor.

Otherwise I only really like playing Scrabble. Mind you, I'd win more often if it wasn't for my unfortunate habit of helping the other players out when they get stuck. Then again, I never did care if I won or lost. I could never tell the difference, ha ha.

Penny said...

lol silverfish!

yah, I have my VCR still also, god are we lame, but if it works........

Me, I can't even imagine spending a day sitting in front of the idiot box
The thought of it. shudders, ew.
Good name though for it.


As for board games, Yahtzee is good also.

kikz said...

antenna here too.. along w/a couple of the digital converters..

we've been off the grid for yrs now, just can't afford it, and when we could.. there were over 100 channels of nothing but brain rot......:P

i do miss the home&garden, discovery,cooking, science/nature stuff.. but that's about all...

very particular 'bout what we watch.. or let the kids watch...

i could mumble about some 'pirate booty' via the beeb... that somehow finds it's way into our computer.(headscratch).....

but... IXNay...

we generally spend most tv time on our local pbs station.... and i know penn does too, hence her attenborough birds mentions :)

oh, and as for the games.. i usta enjoy some of them.. but the 'killing' was impersonal.. like um...atari tanks.. :)

killing avatars just doesn't do it for me..and i wonder at.. the kids playing runescape.. as murder is rampant there, as is mercantilsm, etc..
was wondering.. if there is murder on 'second life' i've never been there to know.... heard there is sex.. but murder?
hmmmm.

Anonymous said...

And to hell with Jack Nicholson - You can handle the truth.

The real a**ekicker when it comes to Jack and that ever-so-famous line from his role as the commanding officer of, uh... Guantanamo... is that he could just as easily be speaking auto-biographically.

Courtesy of the great Dave McGowan:

"...This is how Jack's bio is supposed to read: Nicholson was born at some indeterminate location to an underage, unwed showgirl. The identity of his father remains a mystery ... To avoid social stigma, Nicholson's grandparents John Joseph and Ethel Nicholson claimed him as their son; in taking their last name, he became John Joseph Nicholson, Jr. He grew up believing his mother June Francis Nicholson to be his older sister. Reporters state that he learned June was actually his mother in 1974, when he was 37 years old. By then, June had been dead for just over a decade, having only lived to the age of 44.

It is said that Nicholson was born at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City, but there is no record of such a birth at the hospital or in the city's archives. As it turns out, Jack Nicholson has no birth certificate. Until 1954, by which time he was nearly an adult, he did not officially exist. Even today, the closest thing he has to a birth certificate is a 'Certificate of a Delayed Report of Birth' that was filed on May 24, 1954. The document lists John and Ethel Nicholson as the parents and identifies the location of the birth as the Nicholson's home address in Neptune, New Jersey.

It appears then that there is no way to determine who Jack Nicholson really is. He has told journalists that he has no interest in identifying who his father was, nor, it would appear, in verifying his mother's identity. What we do know is that the nucleus of the 1960s clique known as the Young Turks (and Turkettes) was composed of the following individuals: the nephew of a Bonesman; the son of an OSS officer; the son of a Naval intelligence officer; the daughter of that same Naval intelligence officer; the daughter of an Army intelligence officer; the daughter of a guy who openly associated with prominent gangsters throughout his life; the son of a probable spychologist; and a guy whose early years are so shrouded in mystery that he may or may not actually exist."

# # #

nobody said...

Speaking of Attenborough, in his autobiography (which I recommend) he discusses his time heading the BBC. It's interesting what he put to air compared to the shitstorm blizzard we get now. There IS a case to be made for television but only if it's tightly restricted.

Nice to have you pop in Mir. I had read that before but it was nice to read it again. The amazing thing about Dave McGowan is that even on a second reading his ability to be eye-popping remains undiminished.

And poor old Les is in amongst it. For what it's worth (and as a just-in-case) I asked him to give us a hoy here if he decides to quit blogspot and set up somewhere else. Mind you, I expect Mike Rivero will post whatever news there is over on wrh.

Penny said...

yup kikz, though sometimes some of the shows peeve me completely.

recalling a nature of things show, why the bees are disappearing,
watched the whole show, waiting for a mention of the role of gm foods as a possible reason for the disappearance, and sadly nadda word!

Afterwards, noted who sponsored the show.

Archer Daniels Midland

questioned answered.

so that kind of stuff cheezes me off.

but for the most part pbs is ok, I thought frontline was pretty good.

Funny, Dave McGowan, I have been waiting for the next part of the laurel canyon stuff, and waiting and waiting, and waiting, i had to go in the archives of Meria show to get my Mcgowan fix, I don't care that they are old, I just had to hear something from Dave.

That guy always makes me laugh!!!!
Anyway, everytime I relisten I catch something I had previously missed, then I wonder, how did I miss that.

oh well, the weather is beautiful for november here, and I've been working outdoors, priming the trim on my shed for painting. yard work, raking, cutting stuff, "chop, chop",
we may bring a tree down in our yard shortly as it is rotten, before some serious winter storm, with much ice does it for us,
much work to do.

But, I love it!

notamobster said...

Nice one noby...this one was like reading my own thoughts. Not in a "you wrote what I was thinking" sort of way, but rather - it seemed as though the thoughts were occurring to me as opposed to reading them. Strange.

all - no cable here either. Turning off the thought cultivator is the best thing I've ever done. I spend toooo much time with my kids now ;) - and we do "meaningful" things like play board games and card games, and walk, ride bikes, work outside, and talk (antiquated idea, I know).

I was partial to Monopoly as a child. I always turned it on it's head and dominated the game. I loan-sharked, hustled, and fought with the siblings. Good times. No more of it though. My kids don't play it, because I saw the same thing, noby. My kids would fight each other and it just seems to encourage greediness. As a capitalist, I'm all for healthy competition, but I despise greed. I don't want to do anything to encourage that in my children. Greed is an emotion, and unchecked emotions have caused untold misery in the world. I remain, ever vigilant of such things, as I have a natural propensity for such behaviours.

Anyway, good read.

Penny said...

hey nobody et al

this is way off topic, I know, but do you recall sometime back there was a brief mention of another german city bombed besides dresden in ww2?
someone popped in with an answer, i think, well anyway, while touring around I came across an old book in Pdf format written by someone named Freda Ultely

the book is called The High Cost of Vengence published in 1949
from the chapter- Our crimes against humanity
the book is here
http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/thcov/

here is a quote:

"It was impossible to travel through the devastated towns of the Western zones without it seeming strange and horrible that we should sit in judgment on the Germans who had never succeeded in killing nearly so many civilians as we did, or in perpetrating worse atrocities than our obliteration bombing of whole cities. Were the German gas chambers really a greater crime against humanity than our attacks on such nonmilitary objectives as Dresden, where we inflicted the most horrible death imaginable on a quarter of a million people in one night, by dropping phosphorus bombs on this undefended cultural center crowded with refugees fleeing west before the Russian advance? This atrocity was among our greatest war crimes, since we demonstrated that our objective was the murder of civilians. We even machine-gunned from the air the women and children fleeing into the countryside from the burning city.

Nor was Dresden the only example of horrible death inflicted on the people of towns which had neither war industries nor any "military importance."

"Who has told the story of Dresden, or that of Cologne, where the cathedral stands in the midst of acres of rubble, demonstrating the fact that we knew how to avoid destruction of nonmilitary objectives if we wanted to?"

definitely a different perspective.
anyway, thought I would share!

nobody said...

On topic, off topic, it's neither here nor there in this joint, ha ha. Thanks Pen. Interesting site, huh? I might wander around and check out a few things. Ciao.

kikz said...

my father in law was a navigator for the RAF,he's one of the last living of his crew.... he bombed dresden, and many others.. along w/the eagles' nest.

we have his sortie logs, i've read them. he regrets what he did, but as he says.. the germans just wouldn't stop.
there was no other way.

but, in my mind, this still doesn't answer the questions about target choices... living quarters, towns burning rubble.. while ford plants and other munitions as well as railroads left untouched. i have my answer... i wonder if he's figured it out...?

he was astonished to learn w/in the last decade, that during this..he and his peer squadrons were used as bait. they had no idea that they were visible on gerry radar, and this fact was kept frm them for almost 50 yrs.

although the yanks were 'quite late' to the war.. he says w/affection.. we were damn glad they finally show'd up.

Anonymous said...

Hey nobody, don't be so down on the tobacco, man! Sure, it'll fuck up your lungs if you smoke too much of it ... but notice how its neurological effects are never discussed in the media? They tell us it's being suppressed for our own good while dumping mutant bug-corn down our throats and poisoning our food supply in a hundred other ways ... but they're concerned about the health effects of smoking?

Ah, hell, don't just listen to me. Laura K-J has a blog post where she lays it all out:

Let's All Light Up!

Penny:
"The word "truth" has become equivalent to "conspiracy theorist"
Have you noticed?
When you question 9/11, your one of those truthers! People say it as if spitting."

I had exactly this thought a while back, when some neocon porridge-head used the epithet 'troofer'. How the hell did we get ourselves in a position where 'truth' is a dirty word?

-sigh- Never mind. It's a rhetorical question.

Penny said...

yah it is nobody, looks like loads of books etc.,
I looked through it a little, but was reading that book.

what I found interesting was how she had felt, observed that what the allied troops had done in Germany was worse then Hitlers death camps.

when I read this stuff in this ladies book, I thought of some of the stuff silverfish had wrote here before??

btw: it is rememberance day here soon, I am not wearing a poppy and am not remembering fondly those who fought for "our freedom"
Because these are the same persons who machine gunned fleeing from the phosphourous bombs, woman and children, right?
So I should honour them for what?

nobody said...

Hey folks, and yeah Psychegram you're right. There are worse things than tobacco out there. And also there's tobacco and there's tobacco, if you can dig it. My rollies go out all the time because I use pure tobacco. Regular cigarettes DON'T go out because they're filled with accelerants like benzene etc.

Curiously cigarettes are never discussed in terms of their toxic industrial additives. Here in Oz there was an idiotic media discussion about cigarettes and bushfires, and making cigarettes 'self-extinguishing'. The tobacco industry complained that this would be a complicated process and would cost too much. What nonsense. All they'd have to do is leave out the accelerants.

Astoundingly no one called them on it. Never mind that bush-fires here are as ferocious as they come, no one was prepared to touch on the subject of accelerants in cigarettes.

Me, I figure the government doesn't want to muddy the waters of their anti-smoking campaign with a discussion of some cigarettes being less harmful than others. And between inhaled burnt leaves and inhaled burnt hydrocarbons, and cancer, there's a big discussion to be had. Meanwhile, cigarettes tossed from cars or campsites into tinder-dry scrub will carry on burning until all fuel is exhausted.

All of that aside, the truth for me is that cigarettes rule my life and I look forward to quitting.

nobody said...

Second thoughts. The point of the tobacco comparison was actually to make a larger point about acknowledging what one does. And this ties into Penny and Kikz's point about people in the military.

The vast majority of people don't think they're 'bad-guys'. This unsurprisingly translates into defending whatever it is they do that might otherwise cop criticism. Any arguments that serve to make the protagonist in the right of things will do, regardless of how flimsy they are. I'm not rejecting Psychegrams points as the benefits of tobacco. But nor am I rejecting the arguments against.

One weighs 'for' and 'against', and decides. Me, I use the continuum. However, rejecting 'against' outright on account of it puncturing one's idea of oneself as a 'good guy', is bullshit. Does that make sense?

Anonymous said...

"However, rejecting 'against' outright on account of it puncturing one's idea of oneself as a 'good guy', is bullshit. Does that make sense?"

Oh, yes, I grok that. My own opinions, beliefs, attitudes, etc have changed so much, so many times these past several years - and I'm not even that old - that I don't hold anything sacred. Or try not to. Being human, I sometimes fail at that, and need it pointed out to me.

As an example, I ask myself every day: all this 9/11 truth, antiwar stuff ... could it be enemy propaganda, for the purpose weakening resolve on the homefront? Yeah, I know, that's just what They would love to say (and justify censoring the 'net thereby.) But it's not impossible, and is a possibility that must be faced.

If we're going to search for the truth, we can't let our own comfortable illusions get in the way ... and everything we believe may well be illusory.

the Silverfish said...

Oh piffle, I’ve had enough of this as I’m getting really bored, had a Colorado low blow in a couple of days ago and it dumped about three feet of wet heavy snow on my tired ole ass. Jesus H Christ people get off the smoking bandwagon already and do what I do, Smoke beer. No nasty carcinogens and it goes down Smooth. Ok it’s a little hard to light but what the hell it’s easy on the lungs.

Now Nobody , You’ve been slacking off for the last couple of days and like I said I’m getting bored as hell and I really don’t feel like shoveling snow, so it’s time fer Yuh to put in some good post so that I can ramble on in the comments. Sheesh man get a grip

Back to the snow, Every fucking time the forecast mentions that a Colorado low is blowing in we know that we’re just going to get dumped on here in Southern Manitoba. Now the thing that bugs the hell out of me is what the hell have we ever done to Colorado that has pissed them off so much? Like we never beat them in Hockey, Baseball or anything else for that matter. Hell we never played them at anything. Probably would have creamed them in Curling but there to damn chicken shit to try. Bunch of Pansies. So instead of facing us out on a curling sheet they choose to dump on us with their goddamn snow. It’s just not fair I tell Yuh, jus not fair at all.

So You Mr. Nobody get down to writhing something good and give us poor folk something to digest on these LONG winter nights, Be hear fo us PLEASE.

Now where’s that God Damn shovel? &^$%@^$$ snow

nobody said...

Onya Psychegram, you can come round here anytime. Apropos the conspiracy mongers being plants, have you read Dave McGowan? His battle with Mike Ruppert was titanic. McGowan victorious and Ruppert standing there stark bollock naked. Should we look away or jeer? Ha ha ha.

Anyway, the bullshit artists are beyond counting and we keep a weather eye out.

And Fish, what do you want me to say apart from, 'Aaaargh, sorry!' It's true I have been slack. But a bag of grass (gift from a friend) will do that to you. Happily it's down to today's final two joints and tomorrow I'll be as sober as an epidemiologist. And as raring to go!

PS Don't worry, I don't get the 'epidemiologist' thing either.