There’s this thing some gamers do called “Let’s Play.” It’s a walkthrough of a game. I’m on a gaming forum called Broken Forum, and some of the people there are doing LPs that are fucking hilarious.
To start with, there’s Matches and Matrimony, which is a dating game starring Jane Austen characters. Angie G has written other LPs on other sites, and they’re always fantastic and funny. Like, laughing-until-I’m-crying funny. For another one by Angie on a different forum, check out Hatoful Boyfriend, a Japanese dating game starring pigeons. (Angie’s not on that forum anymore, though. Long story. But the LP is still there and worth reading.)
The Heian Love dating game is Japanese and is weird as all get-out. Nebty, the LP writer, is almost as funny as the game itself.
Shira Oka: Second Chances is an American dating game that thinks it’s Japanese. Elyscape is doing a great job of it.
Creole Ned is doing a LP of Sims 3. Watching his character try to romance a guy is very cute and funny. Also, lots of kitchen fires.
LP writer Zekedms has completed a walkthrough of Rig n’ Roll, a trucking game. Yes, really, big rig trucking. I’ve never seen so many policemen in one game.
So if you want a laugh and have a few minutes free, check these out. They’re fabulous, even if you aren’t a gamer.
The Viking reads Jezebel.com. We’re both feminists, but he keeps up with the news more than I do. Tonight he found this article, on how religious schools and hospitals are furious that the Affordable Health Care Act makes them provide birth control to female employees and students.
I am not religious in the slightest. It really, really bothers me that so many religions dictate such terrible morality that keeps women chained to their reproductive systems. I keep trying to love humanity, I really do, but then I read things like this and it makes me sad and angry. A friend of mine in high school had a bumper sticker that read, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” I’m not big on bumper stickers, but I remember that one 20 years later because I agree with it. Reproductive rights are bound up with women’s lesser status in many societies, including the right-wing elements of our own.
I attend a Catholic university. It seemed like the right choice at the time I enrolled. I’m in my last year, so there’s no point in changing to a state school now. But this story (and others like it) makes me horribly embarrassed to know that the school is getting money because of me. I get federal and state financial aid, so it’s not me paying for classes, but it means the government is giving the school funds for my education. I just realized I’m directly contributing to the meshing of church and state. I am a little ashamed, thanks for asking. I suppose this also makes me a hypocrite. Sigh. Next time I have a few bucks to spare I’ll make a donation to the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The only good thing is that the uni doesn’t require faculty or staff to be Catholic, and my Eastern Religions class last fall was full of atheists avoiding the classes on Christianity. (Students are required to take a religion class in order to graduate. Happily, they aren’t all Christian propaganda.)
Now I’m depressed. More on feminism and birth control some other time…
The mind is a funny thing when it comes to music. What prompted this post was that a few minutes ago I got Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It” stuck in my head. A) I do not like this song and never have; B) I haven’t heard it in probably 15 years. This happens to me all the time. It happens to lots of other people, too. Science has no idea why.
About a year ago I read a book by the always-great Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and author who writes about strange cases of brain damage and what the damage says about how the mind works. This particular book was called Musicophilia, and it documented how many questions there still are about how music affects the brain. Nobody knows why we get songs stuck in our head, or why music therapy helps autistic kids, or why Alzheimer’s patients can remember songs from their youth when they can’t even remember their own names. It’s neat, neat stuff.
Sacks’ other books are worth looking for, too. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a classic. Looking at his Wikipedia page, I see he had a new book come out in 2010 and I missed it. I hope the library has it as an ebook…
I did some reading on correctional psychology in my Forensic Psych book this evening. It was depressing as hell. 58% of the people in the U.S. prison system are in for drug-related crimes. Only 14% are incarcerated for violent crimes. More than one out of every 100 people are in jail or prison at this point. America has more people in prison than anywhere else in the world — both per capita and in sheer numbers. Worldwide, there are nine million incarcerated. American prisons house two million of them. 15-20% of them have mental illnesses, up to 65% of inmates in some facilities.
And people who are suspected of possibly being future repeat offenders can be confined indefinitely, usually after they’ve served their prison term. Despite the American Psychological Association’s statement that 2/3 of predictions of future crimes are wrong, the Supreme Court made “selective incapacitation” — this imprisoning of people before they commit crimes — fully based on psychologists’ and psychiatrists’ testimonials. This practice especially pisses me off. Whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty?” How can we hold people, possibly for life, on the chance they might commit a crime in the future?
I’m sure a lot of you reading this are already aware of the facts, but they’re new to me. I mean, I knew drug-related jail time was out of control, but I had no idea by how much. And I didn’t know about selective incapacitation at all. Fucking horrible. Don’t people in this country have rights? Yes, prisoners have done wrong (in most cases). But if they’ve done their time they should be allowed to leave when their sentence is up.
It was interesting to read about all this from a forensic psych point of view. Most of correctional psychologists’ time is spent on administrative tasks, apparently. 18% of the job is assessment/evaluation, and only 26% is time spent counseling, on average. But, then, most prisoners don’t get any benefit from being pressured into joining treatment programs. They don’t change at all unless they’re in the program voluntarily. So all those mandatory sex offender treatment programs, anger management classes, etc., are useless. It seems like offering education and vocational training to a lot of non-violent offenders helps. So does one-on-one counseling, under a lot of situations. Clinical treatment of mentally ill prisoners helps a lot, but only if they continue treatment — and especially medication — after they’re released.
Definitely interesting reading. I hope this class positively affects my prejudiced classmates. There are a lot of hard facts and statistics presented. Maybe they can get over at least a little of their bigotry. I wish the professor had correctly posted this week’s discussion board topic — talking some of the data out with the class would have been very interesting. I really would have liked to see their reactions to the material…
The therapist has decided he can’t fix me. Depressing. I may have to give up running altogether. He wants me to talk to my GP about it. The problem is that if the foot bone is grinding against my leg bones when I run, then the bones will wear out faster. Walking doesn’t hurt as long as I don’t go too fast. So I may be limited to moderate-speed walking for my cardio. Bugger. I can’t see my GP until February 28th, because he’s out of the office until the 26th. I can see his assistant, but I’d much rather talk to the doc about it. I only like seeing the assistant when I have the flu or something lightweight.
To change the subject entirely for the moment: the television just played the Subaru commercial about the mom driving around the kid hockey players. While the Pogues’ “If I Should Fall From Grace with God” is an awesome song, who the hell thought it was a good idea for this commercial? I mean, the part they use is about dying. It has nothing to do with children, hockey, or cars, and one would think it’s too depressing for a commercial. Very odd.
(15 minutes later…) Adventure Time is fucking AWESOME. I love that show. (It was just on.) Rebecca Sugar, artist/songwriter/sometimes-writer for the show, has become one of my favorite entertainers. The Viking introduced me to her work. She posts her versions of AT songs online sometimes, and I love her voice. Hearing her sing makes me want to give her a big hug. Check YouTube for her stuff, and watch the show if you’ve never seen it.
I wound up watching the last two-thirds of the film after all. I actually enjoyed it, which surprised me because I didn’t really like the original Tron. I have a couple of problems with it, though. Spoilers under the cut.
WordPress is weird. I kept trying to put in a favicon.ico so I’d have a icon, and it wouldn’t read the file no matter what I used to convert it. So I tried a GIF. Worked the first time, with a line in the site header telling WordPress where to get the icon from. Copied the same line to the WP admin header, and now my nice little icon works across the whole site. Yay!
I am also happy to report that playing with WP templates and pages has taught me that a) I can still write HTML from memory, and b) I can still read a PHP program despite having not touched code since PHP3. Maybe one of these days I’ll catch up. A couple of months ago I bought myself books on Ajax and Java, but haven’t spent any time with them. (Yet!)
