Shishi Sonson

I’ll admit it; confidence isn’t one of my strong points. I think it’s hard for people who reflect a lot to be totally confident about themselves because I think confidence is in part a somewhat irrational thing unless you’re genuinely pretty fucking awesome (which I’m not). 

I think a good metaphor would be that we’re all dealt a certain Poker hand in the Poker game of life. Some of us have great hands, pocket rockets, for example. These people are confident because they know for a fact that their probability of winning is pretty damn good. The rest of us who have shitty hands have pretty much only two options.

1. Fold and admit to everyone that you have a shitty hand or

2. Bluff the fuck out of everyone and act like you’re totally confident even though you don’t really have shit to back it up other than denial and your own ignorance. 

In short, it’s a little frustrating when it’d be socially advantageous for me to be confident about stuff but I just can’t be because I honestly don’t believe that my hand can win the pot. I also don’t like bluffing… which I guess makes me a pretty bad Poker player in the Poker game of life. 

I can only speak for myself, but the gaming industry has changed a lot over the years, and it’s headed in a direction that I’m honestly not too huge a fan of. For example, I think it’s ridiculous how Bioware can cough out crappy-ass games and then pay off various affluent game reviewers to give their crappy games a nice and deceitful review. I hate Capcom for making fighting games and then having DLC characters AS WELL AS pumping out a ‘superior’ version of the game a relatively short while later. I don’t like how many, many games nowadays are getting more and more streamlined as producers are trying to appeal to a vast number of audiences as opposed trying to create a quality product that may not necessarily appeal to many people, but brings about a deep and rich experience so that the game, in essence, withstands the test of time because it’s so freaking amazing. I guess this is one reason why the indie scene is getting so big nowadays. 

On the whole, I just don’t enjoy games as much as I used to, even the supposedly ‘great’ games like Skyrim or whatever feels pretty mediocre to me. It’s very, very rare nowadays for me to play a game that I’m like, “Whoa… that was an outstanding-freaking-game,” whereas towards the mid to late 1990’s, pretty much every other game I played then was epic, Xenogears, Final Fantasy 6,7,8,Tactics, Legend of Legaia, Grandia, Kingdom Hearts (2 sucked), Valkyrie Profile, Starcraft, Diablo II: Lod, Metal Gear, Resident Evil 1, 2, 3, etc.! Even the older games are epic too! like Baldur’s Gate, Super Mario RPG, Earthbound, Megaman X, Legends, Legends 2, etc. etc. etc.

If I try to name the REALLY good games I’ve played in recent years, the list is considerably shorter. 

Anyway, when talking about piracy, I feel like it’s the natural thing to do nowadays because the probability of a game blowing my mind and making me emotionally climax is just so damn low (EVEN IF THE REVIEWS ARE OUTSTANDING). I understand I could just ‘not’ play it, and I usually choose to do just that. I typically only pirate the really, really hyped up games that are supposed to be REALLY REALLY REALLY good… and then it turns out I don’t like them very much and I rarely ever finish any game that I pirate. It then turns out that I would have really, really regretted hypothetically paying 60 dollars (or any amount of money for that matter) for rubbish like Skyrim (I did not like Skyrim) or Mass Effect 3. 

Anyway, in short, I think games nowadays suck a lot more in general in comparison to many of the games in the past. Sure there were bad games back then too, but it was usually pretty obvious which was bad and which was good, whereas nowadays, even the supposedly GREAT OMFG GOTTA PLAY IT games are potentially crapparific or mediocre. 

Well, that’s just me.

I mean, is it unfair to game developers? Yes it is, and I’m not trying to say that piracy is a good thing, but I sure enjoy not wasting my money on a product that I find I wouldn’t have enjoyed very much after the fact of buying a nonrefundable copy of it.

I’d like to thank my friends for supporting me spiritually even though they won’t take the time to read any of the things I write. I’d like to thank my parents for forcing me to pay for the internet now. I’d also like to thank my anti-virus software for defending my computer against porn related viruses all these years. Looking back, I’ve written a lot of stuff; some angry, some emo, some happy. Let’s look towards the future and go where the winding roads lead us.

Goodbye, Space Cowboy. 

One of the things that trips me out the most in the world is when I get to know someone, think they’re pretty awesome people, and then they flip the switch and you see various (shocking) facets of them that you had absolutely no idea they ever had.

I understand that when you first meet people, you wouldn’t know too much about them. In that scenario, I wouldn’t be terribly shocked to find out they have a darker/crazed, issue ridden side to them, but I’m talking about people I’ve known for years, people I’ve been through trials and tribulations with. I don’t know if they were always this way and I’ve just been looking at them through rose colored glasses all this time or if they just, at one point, d.n.a digivolved behind my back into some funky-ass creature that I can no longer recognize.

It’s not that I’m particularly averse to change. I mean, I’ve changed a whole lot over the years; my opinions on things changed, my values changed, I learned how to write a little gooder, etc. etc. etc., but I think the crux of who I am has stayed pretty constant. 

Well, then again, I guess that’s also why I’m such a fucking loser.  

So, a long time ago, I guess our Homosapien ancestors got eaten by saber-tooth tigers a lot and decided that, in order for their race to not die out, women needed to be oppressed so that men didn’t need to worry about their incessant naggings and demands for attention so they could focus on fending off saber-tooth tigers and various other important stuffs.. like.. survival and… food.. etc. Furthermore, since all the men were literally risking their lives on a daily basis just to protect and provide for the women who do only simple chores like gathering berries or making sandwiches and what not, it seemed only fitting that the men be allowed full access to their ambrosial cooches if only to ensure the proliferation of their species.

Essentially, because humanity needed baby making machines and solidarity, men became the domineers and women, the dominated. I’m not trying to suggest whether I’m for or against that, that’s just how it historically went down (roughly). 

So, nowadays, in society, we want men to be manly and women to be feminine. That may seem like a totally normal thing, but isn’t it sort of interesting when you think about it? (The answer is ‘yes,’ god damn it.)

We still hold onto these gender roles, men acting like men, women acting like women, even though saber-tooth tigers no longer exist. We still hold onto these gender roles even in the face of over population, with more and more people growing disinterested in having children. In modern society, there’s no ‘point’ for men to be manly or women to be feminine other than the fact that that’s what we’re used to because of the precedent set by our apish forefathers. There’s no longer a biological necessity that demands that we enforce these gender roles, yet we continue to do so. I think when we unwittingly conform to our ancient biological programmings, we subject ourselves to a form of esoteric slavery.

It is not I but Charlotte Perkins Gilman who theorized that the absence of gender roles would lead to a much better world. I tend to agree. I think that the world would be a much more peaceful and rational place if the goals of men and women were not to be as manly or as feminine as possible, but as ‘gender neutral’ as possible. If men were not bothered to act like total douche-bags and women not pressured to be sexy, slut machines, maybe we’d all have more time to focus on being better human beings. 

I think I was born a pretty extroverted person. I remember, as a child, I was generally pretty fearless and did all sorts of things that would be indicative of extroversion, but things change sometimes. Nowadays, I find that I’m rather comfortable with being introverted, with having little to no human interaction for days or weeks on end.

It’d probably be easy to dismiss me off as a freak (not that introverted people are freaks) or abnormal, but I think my “new found” acceptance of introversion has very little to do with me. You see, I don’t choose to be introverted. If I had a choice in the matter, I’d prefer to be really sociable all the time because I honestly think that that’s my natural state of being. One day, however, I guess I suddenly had this strange epiphany that caused me to see people and the world in a completely different way. 

I remember I was walking through the corridor at my old high school. It was extremely crowded with countless people mingling by their lockers, all talking about nothing important, just senseless bantering. I walked by them and just thought to myself, “Are these people all fucking robots or something?” 

When I got a little older, my peers started getting into partying, drinking alcohol, playing beer pong, smoking, having nice cars, keeping up with the inner workings of the NBA, etc., and to them, that’s just normal. That’s what everyone else does and what society tells them to do in order to fit in, so people just hop onto the bandwagon and they don’t even think for themselves—what they, as individuals, want. They’re satisfied and content with just being part of this twisted overmind of social, emotional, and ideological superficiality. I’m sure I’m probably taking René Descartesout of context, but I am a firm believer that you have to have the ability to “think” in order for you to “exist,” if you catch my drift.

So, here I am, just sort of masochistically observing this farcical terror that is the reality I’ve been mercilessly plunged into, and I know, without a doubt, that I don’t want to be here, nor do I want to mindlessly partake in senseless social rituals just to get some superficial acknowledgement from individuals who are clearly mindless zombies with raging hormones.

So, I guess that’s why I’ve been very introverted nowadays. 

I’ve been to Disneyland once for my 8th grade graduation; it sucked. A year later, I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Disney World in Orlando, Florida as well. It sucked a little less. I think my biggest gripe with Disneyland is that the entire ‘magic’ of it all is just corporate shenanigans in disguise. Sure, I guess Disneyland and World was probably a pretty awesome place back when Walt Disney was still alive, but what’s so magical about $3.50 churros and four dollar bottles of water? I know a lot of people think Disneyland is incredibly amazing and whatnot, but I honestly can’t even begin to give a fuck. 

If I had to choose, I’d say I like Universal Studios a lot more because they don’t go out of their way to bullshit you about this magical utopia nonsense. They’re like, “We’re an amusement park. Give us money and come have fun—no bullshit attached,” and I dig that. I can actually enjoy myself there because I’m not being inundated with profuse amounts of optimistic, giddy brainwashing and social pressure to hop on this happy-zombie-bandwagon. On top of that, I find stuff at Universal Studios a little more interesting and entertaining in comparison to the stuff at Disneyland, but that’s a personal preference. 

With that said, I don’t think people can rationally like Disneyland. People always want to go because of some abstract emotional desire, and I say, “Fuck that shit.”