linterry's blogger

Yesterday I received a recuitment letter from Electronic Arts. They apparently read my resume on workopolis.com and want to conduct a phone interview next week for an audio engineer position ... at their Vancouver studio. Quite frankly, I thought it was some kind of spam mail at first. When something totally out of ordinary happens, like getting into a car accident or somebody confessing their love to you, there's always those first five seconds when the whole situation hasn't settled into the mind yet, as if the brain cells themselves are struggling to establish the proper neuronal connections to deal with the situation. In other words, my head's spinning and thoughts are wildly chaotic. That's what happened to me when I first saw that mail. I was so shocked for the first five seconds that I thought "this must be spam mail". But as I read it over and over again I finally settled down and realized that it was real.

I'm not quite sure what to do with this. Initially, like I do with most out-of-the-ordinary-mails, I just leave it there for awhile and mull over things in another room. I was actually quite unhappy, because no matter how this affair turns out, it will become a great distrubance in the rather inane but likeable lifestyle I have produced for myself in Toronto (which is pretty much summed up by parks, libraries, malls, and Swiss Chalet). I positively hate all kinds of disturbances, ranging from doctor's appointments, raking leaves, telephone calls, parents calling my name from upstairs. Of course, as much as I hate disturbances, I can't just ignore them, just like I can't ignore this recruitment letter. I don't know why that is... most certainly, nobody is forcing me to pursue this, but if I don't, there's always going to be that stupid voice preaching at me "ooh, look at that big opportunity you missed". And if another few months I find that I can't stand life here, or my girlfriend can't stand me not having a job, passing on this today will only make me want to shoot myself even more tomorrow.

I don't know why I'm so cynical, but all the negative things about pursuing this job offer were lined up first at my brain's processing centre. The postive things were notably absent. I thought about all the hassles I'd have to go through just to conduct the interview - the mental preperation, readying the questions I'm supposed to ask, and the anxious waiting for the phone call. I just don't like any of that, it stresses the nerves. And if the job offer does go through, which part me hopes it doesn't, then I actually have to deal with whether taking it is a good idea. For all I know, EA could be a lousy place to work, as I have read somewhere on the web years ago, and for all I know, the job could be total shit, and for all I know, I might hate the people who work there. When it comes to people skills, I'm afraid I'm just about the smiles, thank you's and excuse me's. I don't know how to make small talk, I don't know how to make inane humor on the spot. I have no problems talking to people I know well, but I have a mountain of problems trying to maintain a conversation with anybody else. It seems to stimulate a part of my brain that involves concentration and hard work, and I'd like to keep that part shut off as much as possible.

In fact, this whole incident has gotten me depressed. Not clinically, but casually depressed. I just didn't want to deal with any of this mentally, so I actually took a nap at 8pm this evening, after watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (which was okay, but I liked March of the Penguins much better). It was the kind of nap where you just want to shut yourself from the rest of the world - to climb into bed and be enveloped into the darkness for just a while. After I woke up, I hibernated under the blanket on the sofa while reading Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I was soon distracted by reruns of Friends.

I suppose my complete lack of resiliency to stress (especially compared to others) is due to the fact that I have avoided all kinds of stress for the last few years, possibly to my own detriment. I am so easily upset nowadays by small obstructions to my will. Just today, I had this misunderstanding with my girlfirend on where she should've waited for me at Paramount theatre, and the end result is that we didn't even sit together. It was absolutely ridiuclous, but absolutely understandable. As I said before, I absolutely, postiviely, despise my own humanity, and I wish I could get rid of it and become a stale robot so I could cope with life better.

My girlfriend and I were at KFC today, when the cell phone rang. I picked it up and it was my mom. She was very upset. "Terry, you LOCKED me out of the house! When are you going to come back?" Fuck. I had just placed my order of two Toonie Tuesdays, and the cashier was asking me whether it was for here or to go. I was half thinking that we should eat here and then go back, but my girlfriend butted in and said "To go" on my behalf. It was predictable, I don't think she would have been able to finish a meal knowing that my mom was stranded outside waiting for the door to be opened.

So I begrudgingly took the KFC bag and headed straight back to the car. It was about this time I could feel this remarkably unpleasant feeling rising from within me. I wanted to eat, now, but because of my stupid mom, I had to go back and open the fucking door for her. I can't be fully sure, but I might have thought to myself "why does she even exist? why does she have to interfere with my lunching?". Of course now, when I feel normal and relaxed, all of these thoughts seem to be irrationally cruel. But opinions are always heavily contingent on the current emotional state, so at the time, I was cursing my mother's existence. Obviously, I was the one who locked her out, so it was pretty much all my fault, but when I'm upset rational thoughts like these seem to fade into the background, lost in some remote corner in my brain.

Not surprisingly, I drove home much faster than usual. The unpleasant feelings were festering in my brain like pus oozing out of an infected wound. I could feel the hatred towards myself, my mother, and the world around me - growing with each second. With every additional 10% of anger generated, I would drive 10% faster, and become 10% more upset at every red light.

After arriving home, and quickly unlocking the door, and receiving an angry glare from my mother, I quickly drove off again and parked the car in a sidestreet. I grabbed the KFC bag and thought 'finally, I can enjoy my lunch in peace'. Except, there was only one Toonie Tuesday meal inside. It took about three seconds of shock before it hit me: something was fucked up. I paid $8.03 for two meals and here I was, ready to eat, sitting with only one meal. Fuck. Did I forget to take a second box? Did the KFC cashier screw me over? Now it seemed those unpleasant feelings, which were just about to recede, shot straight out of me like a case of bad diahrrhea. BAM! I slammed the wheel out of sheer frustration. My girlfriend got so scared she left the car and proclaimed she was going to walk back home herself. I honked the car repeatedly until she came back.

I could have let the whole thing go. I could have just eaten the single Toonie Tuesday meal with my girlfriend in peace, and buy some doughnuts or whatever at the Tim Hortons behind my house to make up for the leftover hunger. But that's not who I am. When my mind is set on something, I absolutely, positively, inevtiably, must get it. Whether it's using despicable methods like AFK-botting, stepping on other people's toes, or calling a store five times a day to see if it finally came in, I absolutely, positively, inevitably, must get it. In this case, "it" was very simple: Two Toonie Tuesday Meals, eaten in peace and solitude with my girlfriend. Nothing was going to stop me, whether it was a bitchy mother complaining that she was locked out, red lights, other cars, or my girlfriend herself.

Streaking down 100km/h on Leslie, I did think to myself just what a horrible person I have become. I guess I still have a frontal lobe, after all. But because there was nobody there to scold me, mostly because I tend to stay away from anyone who tries to do so, it didn't occur to me that I should put any effort towards correcting msyelf. Who would I be correcting myself for? It certainly woudln't be for myself. If I lived in the jungle all by myself, I'd do exactly as I'd please, and if I were a bit stronger I'd just beat up anything that got in my way. If I were to correct myself, it would have to be for someone else. Yet that person didn't exist. My girlfriend already gives me her unconditional love, so there's a complete lack of motiviation to do anything good for her. The day she threatens to leave me however, is the day that I will give an honest effort to not get upset over a 20 minute lunch delay.

I guess I'm just one of those crazy, maniacial obsessive-compulsive people. But the funny thing is, outside of my girlfriend and my immediate family, everyone who knows me (and who hasn't read this blogger) pretty much thinks I'm a normal, well-to-do human being. I've tutored two students and got to know their families pretty well, and they always invite me for dinner and shower me with various gifts throughout the year. They think I'm bright, talented and what not. But of course, they just know me for five hours a week, and for that amount of time, I can most certainly keep myself from coming loose. It's difficult though, and that's why I can't really spend more than 90 minutes tutoring, otherwise I get this incredible urge to just leave and return to the comfort of my own room.

Did I finally get what I wanted? I made it back to KFC, and after complaining like a madman the cashier promptly gave me an extra - no, the missing Toonie Tuesday meal. But before I could even find a seat, this old lady tugs my shirt out of nowhere. "Ni hui jiang guo yu?" she asks of me. When it rains, it pours. I mean seriously, what are the odds that on a fucked up day like this, a Chinese lady would tug on my shirt and ask me whether I could speak Chinese? Most days I can easily manage to go through the whole day being invisible to the world around me.

So at this point maybe you'd think I'd just shake my head and pretended to not understand, but strangely enough, I didn't. I actually felt this compelling urge to help these people, as if I had to give back something to this world for rampaging like a madman over two Toonie Tuesday meals. So I spent about five minutes listening to their orders in Chinese and translating them to the cashier. I can still remember it: 12 chicken wings and 1 drumstick with fries. But since that doesn't fit in exactly with the KFC ordering system, they eventually settled with 10 chicken wings and a Toonie Tuesday. The father of this family kept on looking at me and smiling, as if I was an outstanding gentlemen of sorts. If only he knew - I doubt he'd even approach me. But I was happy that I could help somebody, because for a moment there, I felt that I was genuinely needed for my services. And for those five minutes, I really felt like I existed. The hunger and anger disappeared almost instantly, as if the chemicals in my brain were being re-arranged on short order.

What about the meal itself? Was the two Toonie Tuesday meals worth all that trouble? Hardly. Yeah, the chicken skin still had that sinful fried and fatty taste, but really it's nothing getting excited about. For all that frustration and anger, I don't even think five sexual orgasms would have made up for it. So I don't really know why I got so upset, I just know that I did. And for that I curse my own humanity.

Go China!!!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/World-of-warcraft-WOW-Any-EU-US-server-powerleveling_W0QQitemZ8235906832QQcategoryZ4596QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

USD$480 for Rank 13 to 14? The human desire knows no limits....
But to get from Lv 1 to 60 in sixteen days... jesus...

I wasn't aware leveling services had exploded to this degree of mechanization and automation:

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=world+of+warcraft+leveling+services&meta=

I tried Dragon Quest 8 today. Apparently it sold millions of copies in Japan in a flash, and it's been getting glorious reviews all over place. So, if I were me, I'd be thinking "hmm, killer sales, glorious reviews, hey, I've GOT to play this RPG!"

I tried playing this game, just like I tried playing Shadow Hearts:Convenant, and Tales of Legendia. But these games just seem to be contingent on a certain amount of attention span that I no longer possess. After the obligtary intro FMV (which I try to skip if possible), there's always this annoying "intro conversation" where the characters are introduced. Usually there's like ten or more pages of dialogue that you have to push X to go thorugh, and by the 5th push, I'm ready to turn my Playstation off. It seems that if a game doesn't blow away my senses in the first 30 seconds, I'd rather watch TV. That's how short my attention span is.

This is actually sort of ironic, because I used to be so... adept at playing old-school RPG's. You know, the ones with turn-based battles, that have you mashing Fight, Fight, Fight Fight, Magic->Flare, Fight, Fight, Fight etc. etc. I used to love that stuff. I could grind for hours and not get bored of it. I even had Cecil, Rydia, Kain, Edge, and Rosa all at Lv99 in the classic Final Fantasy 2 for the SNES. But now, in 2005, give me ten turn-based battles in a row and I will be kicking a soccer ball at the same time just to keep my insatiable mind occupied.

And that's what happened with me and Dragon Quest 8. I tried extra hard to endure all the pointless conversation in the first town, so I could at least see the overworld. I had to tell myself "it's a good thing to play a game like this because it will expand my attention span". Wouldn't you know it, I made it outside the first town. Truthfully, it was actually kind of fun for a while grinding monsters outside town and leveling, until about 20 minutes in, another story element came up, and I just got so fed up with having to look for this particular NPC that I just gave up and turned off the Playstation off.

I looked at the Dragon Quest 8 DVD after it ejected from the PS2. 4.1 gigs of digial information, prepared so meticuously by so many talented people over countless man hours, all for the sake of entertaining... and... I am mentally incapable of enjoying it. The game is not fun. But I'm sure the Terry of the past, the one who grinded Cecil, Kain, Rosa, Edge, and Rydia to Lv99, would have had a real blast playing Dragon Quest 8. Too bad he doens't exist anymore.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-pvp&T=340220&P=1
This is probably one of the most interestnig threads about WoW that I've read. Human obsession leadnig to self-destuctive addictive behavior.... all brought to light through the PvP Honor System!?!? But there's definitely a degree of truth to it. Does the drive to excel and be the best result in pathological masochism?

I can only thank my own cynicsm for not setting my heart on becoming Rank 14, and something more achievable (like Exalted in AV). Some things in this world, are best left uncoveted, because human desire can sometimes turn people mad.

Today I managed to stay from WoW away all day, until after dinner. I tried a game of Arathi Basin since it seemed like a lot of fun from the few times I tried it before. After three or four games, no doubt about it, Arathi Basin is like 100 times better than Alterac Valley. For one thing, it's really intense, and there's a feeling that everything you do can have a profound effect on the end result. This is in sharp contrast to AV, where even if you try hard, all it takes is for two or three AFK-botters to negate your effort. Nobody AFK-bots in Arathi, for one thing, it'd be pretty conspicuous on a 15-man team.

The best thing about Arathi however, is that since it's a race for resources, the game is guaranteed to end within 20 minutes or so. AV apparnetly had an insane match length record of 48 hours! I hope nobody stayed through the whole thing. There's nothing more heartbreaking then making it all the way to the final base, and then have the Alliance turn it around and dragging the match on for another 2 hours.

The thing about Arathi though is that occasionally people will just leave the game from the start if they feel the teams are stacked. At first I didn't get why everybody was leaving, until the match started and I discovered that everybody on the Alliance team was like epic-geared. Needless to say, the Horde got rolled over like nobody's business.

So after playing many hours of Battleground PvP, here's what I think about being a rogue: this class does not "pwn" or dominate as it used to. For one thing, it's not field PvP so there's no ganking. Their mentality is PvP focused, so they're expecting to be jumped. That just about takes more than half of the advantage away. In addition, practically every class has an "anti-jump" ability that can effectively shake rogues off. Priests have Psychic Scream, Warlock's have the annoying Death Coil (which Will of the Forsaken can't even break), Mages have Frost Nova and Blink, Hunters have Scatter Shot and the annoying [Feign Death-Freeze Trap] combo. Warriors and Paladins don't even have to shake a rogue off, they just turn around after the stuns wear off and pound you to bits. The scariest sight is an epic-geared Warrior. They charge stun, and then boom, dead in less than three seconds from Mortal Strikes, Overpower and Execute. On the BG's, the Rogue's weaknesses are often brutally exposed, much more so than on generic field PvP below 60.

Actually when you think about it, Rogues are quite low in the food chain right now. But they do have some redeeming values. For one thing, Distract and Improved Sap can annoy just about anyone. I've seen epic-geared Field Marshals waste 30 seconds on the BG's just because they got sapped and can't let it go. They run around like idiots trying to find the rogue in hopes of salvaging their ego. Sometimes his nearby buddies also join in the search, like they all have some stake in the hunt.. and that's good, because that buys the rest of our team time to capture objectives. The funniest thing is watching a mage going nuts spamming Instant AE in circles.

For sure, Improved Sap is the most useful ability a rogue has in Arathi. It's distracting and very damaging to the ego, and often makes an opponent lose track of what he or she was initially doing. The second best ability a rogue has is to stun an opponent using a combo like CheapShot, BackStab, Kidney Shot, BackStab. With either the classic 31/8/12 or 21/8/22 builds, this will be eight or nine seconds of pure gapless stun. This won't kill anyone, not even priests, at full health, even with an epic dagger and 650+ Attack Power, but its value lies in the stun, not the damage.

I finally got exalted in Alterac Valley. It took two weeks of constant AFK-botting and the real-life occasional participation (when I felt that the Horde actually had a chance of winning, which is rare on Mannoroth). The whole ordeal was far more grueling than entertaining. At one point some assholes actually reported me to the GM's that I was AFK-botting, and the next day I got an e-mail from Blizzard regarding their "new policy", and that another repeat offense would get my account suspended. I was a bit more discreet when AFK-botting after that.

Why even bother to get exalted in Alterac? Well, so I could get this and this for my rogue. Not that they make that much of a difference, anyhow. The top Ambush goes from the 1700's to the 1800's (on lv1 critters). Not exactly the end of the world. In a single player game, for the equivalent amount of effort, you most likely would have been rewarded with the Armageddon, the most powerful weapon that instantly annihalates any enemy within a 50 yard radius. But since this is the World of Warcraft where people regularly spend 10 hour sessions farming items, the amount of time that I put in pales in comparison. Hence, the seemingly meager reward. Because you can't give everybody Armageddons.

If I knew that the reward was so mathematically meager to begin with, then why did I even bother spending all that time farming reputation? I really don't know, to be honest. I guess becuase the rewards had purple text (epic) instead of blue (rare). All I know is that when you put a Carrot in front of me, as long as I feel that it is attainable and that it is of some tangible improvement to my current status, then I will want it like mad. In fact, I was downright possessed with farming reputation in Alterac Valley. I would be visibly upset if I missed a good match where lots of people turned in reputation and I wasn't there to AFK-bot. Likewise, when I came back from dinner and saw that my reputation jumped 867 points for doing absolutely nothing, I would wear a huge smile on my face for the next.... ten seconds.

Logically, rationally, none of this makes any sense. It's just madness really, to spend so much concentrated effort and resources on getting a couple of items that really, don't even add more than 5% in your character's overall uberness. Yet like I said before, just being logically aware of the madness does not grant the power to overcome it. The process must play itself through as part of the classic desire->motivation->reward cycle. It's very, very, difficult to break the cycle halfway. It's like telling someone who's been infatuated with someone for the last two weeks to just stop infatuating, or telling someone who's bidding on a rare antique on eBay that the price is too high and she should just let it go. Giving up on something that you want badly is so impossbly hard, at least for some people. They would rather put their health in danger than to give up on what they want.

But at the end of the day, I really think it's those people who can let go that are blessed. The most blessed ones are those who have the power to never attach their hearts to anything in the first place, but I'd venture these people don't exist, at least not in my immediate world. Certainly if they did, neurologists would probably discover some mutation in their DNA that caused the straitum to malfunction or some rare type of dopmaine deficiency. But I know some people, like my girlfriend, who rarely obssess over anything, be it clothes, accessories, items in World of Warcraft, television shows, etc. etc. If she misses something, or can't get something, it seems so easy for her to just say "oh well", and move on. On the other hand, if I miss an Arsenal match where Theirry Henry scores, I will brood over the fact for the next hour. Hence my life feels like it's always swaying excessively in one direction or another, and there's never any sense of repose.

I've been playing quite a bit of WoW recently, almost like a second wind of sorts, and at one point I have to say I got fairly addicted to it. I leveled a three-month abandoned 53 rogue to 60 within a week, then spent another few weeks running boring instances and AFK-botting in AV to deck myself out in blue items.

The more I play this game, the more I find it to be rationally pointless. At one point, this game was legitimately fun. It was fun exploring different areas and just hanging out doing nothing because it was all so new and exciting. But after a hundred hours or so, all the novelty wears off and all you're left with is The Grind. The Grind to 60. The Grind for Epics. The Grind for Reputation. The Grind for Gold. It does seem that novelty evaporates far more quickly than desire, which has the persistent survivability of a cockaroach.

This game just refuses to end. More appropriately, Blizzard is trying its hardest to keep us playing in overtime - and it seems to be working. It's no big secret on how they accomplish this. They just have to trickle out new items and new power-ups and the entire WoW community will go ga-ga at the new levels of power they could potentially achieve. You can find evidence of this hysteria all of over the place. Most noticeably on thottbot.com, almost every high quality item has a plethora of comments ranging from the scatterish-analytical (a warrior with this item could achieve insanely high dps) to the downright childish (OMG, if a mage rolls on this I'm going to have him blacklisted). No doubt this is evidence at just how much emotion is at stake here - a testament to the infinite power and insanity of Human Desire. Not surprisingly, the better an item is, the more comments it gets - similar to how a pretty girl's blog will always get more comments than others. Like them or not, these are just unbreakable laws of the universe - famous people get more attention, bad news gets talked about more, etc. etc.

Sometimes, it's quite scary how far people are willing to go to achieve new levels of power. I joined this piddly guild, Maleficient, over half a year ago on a whim, and now it has over 200 members. They run MC, Onyxia, and BWL every week at a fixed time, they have a buffed up website, and they even pay $10/month for a registered Ventrilo server so they can voice chat in instances. Why do people go through all this trouble? I really don't think it's because people want to make friends or feel like they belong in a group. These are more incidental bonuses to the core reason for joining an organized guild: so you can run the most difficult instances and thus have a chance of getting the most coveted epic purple gear.

It's almost fascinating how so many "intelligent" humans can be so easily manipulated into playing an empirically useless game beyond its natural lifespan. The Carrot on a Stick phenemonon is such a deceivingly powerful tool to control human behavior. What is even more fascinating is that simply being aware of this phenomenon doesn't grant you the power to overcome it. Meaning, you can't just say 'Oh, I know Blizzard's just foolin with our heads, so I'm not going to play their stupid game'. In all likelihood you'll still be playing the game with a conscious awareness that you're being messed with. This is probably the most personally compelling evidence I've seen that humans have a sort of split dual personality: their inner selves regulated by the striatum which controls motivation and our ability to take action, and their rational observer self in the frontal lobe that tries to apply an ethics and moral value system to everything we do. This is why people still take drugs despite drugs ruining their lives, or husbands cheating on their wives despite the risk it puts on their marriage. They know it's wrong, they know they should stop, but it's no longer in their control. At the end of the day, these people will only discover that the inner self is the one in control of their actions, even on a bioloigcal level.

The World of Warcraft has really turned into a breeding ground for devilish impulses and selfish desires. Quite honeslty, I completely regret playing this game at all. Most certainly I have gone through countless desire-motivation-reward cycles through this game, but much like real life, once you've done all that, where does that leave you? Your mind's buzzing, you can't read a simple book, and it takes all the joy out of the simple things in life.

It's funny how when I think about it, I really don't have any long term goals to speak of. I mean I really try to be introspective, and think really hard, "where do I want to be in ten, twenty years?" and really, nothing comes out. Absolutely nothing. When it comes to short term goals though, I have plenty. I'm hungry, so I eat. I want to play games, so I play. I want to have sex, so I (try to) have sex. I want to masturbate, so I masturbate. In many ways, I am just like any other animal: a raccoon eagerly rummaging through people's garbage for food, or an overexcited dog sniffing another dog's ass. My brain sends instincts, and I follow them. It is very difficult to do otherwise.

The other day I saw this elderly couple walk into Yenching (a Szechuan restaurant) at Bayview Village. One of them was remarkably fat, and I just wondered how much food a person would need to eat everyday to accumulate so much body mass. Did the body mass serve any purpose? This fat lady must have had more then her own share of gluttonous pleasure in her lifetime, and each kilogram of extra fat stood as testimonial. When the waiter assigned them a seat, the two of them just stood there, with a rather dissastifed look, like they were expecting better. "I'm sorry, we'd like to sit in the back", the fat one chimes. The waiter looks at the back but there are no seats. The fat woman breathes a huge sigh of discontent, like she's been handed the worst luck in the world. They finally accept a seat in the corner.

I watched that whole scene and I felt so disgusted at myself for being human. Some people, particuarily the wealthy and the successful, reach a certain stage where they are so difficult to satisfy. I'm sure they weren't born like that. People almost always go through one period of their life when just being able to play in the garden makes them so happy. But give them video games, cars, nice clothes, gourmet food, and eventually they just turn into monsters. Real, scary, unsatiable monsters. The worst is when you give them unconditional love. It's like an invitation for them to hurt other people. But it's not their fault really. It's not my fault either. We were simply designed that way. Yesterday's supreme accomplishment becomes today's indifferent triviality. Like a black hole, humans consume endlessly without any sense of finality. We instnictly want so much love from others, and we beautify it in music and poems... yet what becomes of the love that is decades old? It becomes naturally reduced to triviality, and the only way to counter the triviliaty is force oneself to think otherwise. In other words, one must wage war against his own God given instincts to maintain any sense of equilibrium.