Zombie Apocalypse!

Something strange happened this morning. I woke up after a dream in such a way that I remember a good portion of the dream right away. There were these zombies creatures that chased and fed more like a vampire. These things were a bit different than either of those because for one thing, they had a clear consciousness. The second thing was that unlike vampires (more like zombies), they fed on the person’s body rather than just their blood. The third thing was that they were more like a human sized alien that liked to crawl their way along after a prey like a werewolf and they also glowed blue.

I for some strange reason went from a passive observer viewing the whole scene of them chasing down their prey to being chased myself. I witnessed many poor folk get run down and eaten because they did not run with enough effort and like most horror film victims, they were dumb enough to stop and look over their shoulder for a moment. LOL, dumb-asses. Anyway, I ended up running ahead of one that I achieved enough of a lead-time to climb a tree. I realized early on that these creatures… whatever they were could not climb which saved my life. I was able to stay aloft from tree to tree getting higher and higher until they forgot about me. Some real vampires had caught wind of what was happening and realized that these things were giving them a bad name. So the vampires stepped in and mopped up. When there was only one more left, I was able to snap off a significant sized branch, lower myself behind that last one by surprise and I smacked it right on the temple with the branch killing it instantly. A vampire saw this and was so impressed that they congratulated me and let me go in peace.

Now why am I telling you this story? After I woke from this strange dream our alarm clock went off. I snuggled with my wife for a few minutes. (Here is the kicker) She told me that she had a ZA… or for you un-geeky folks Zombie Apocalypse dream. She said in her dream that despite my efforts, I fell victim to the hungry curse and was eaten while she survived. Can you imagine that!?! I think that I would more than dominate in a ZA due to my comprehensive knowledge of zombies and my hours of tactical training and weapons handling in various shooting video games. I am a lot higher level in life than most with the XP that I have accumulated in a variety of life experiences. Well, it does appear that our dreams had two VERY different writers.

Help with Magic: The Gathering

I have been a small time gamer over the years but not dedicated to much outside of World of Warcraft. I have dabbled a bit in Magic: The Gathering in the last few years. I first started playing on deployment in 2009 in Afghanistan while waiting on a flight back home to the states. We had two days to kill and a buddy handed me a spare deck and told me I had to learn. We are both geeks at heart.

I recently have tried to look further into playing with a little more depth. I have on many occasions beaten friends and family but never have a beaten a seasoned player… mostly because I do not play often. I have tried a few websites on my own.

One site is a blog by Dee Barizo called Magic: Game Plan at http://magicgameplan.com/. In this site, Dee goes into several aspects of the gaming experience with MTG like deck building, pricing, playing and strategy. With it, Dee has several links throughout his sight that I personally found very helpful.

Dee also has a Bio page where he talks bit about himself and how he came to play and love the game. He talks also of his experiences getting started and some of his success along the way.

I am not saying that this blog is a be all/end all in the Magic: The Gathering repository of knowledge. But it is a small place that I have found useful to myself in a few ways to enhance my gaming experience. If anyone reading knows of any helpful sites on this or other geeky subjects please comment and share.

We can learn from the bloggings of others.

I believe that online blogging has a tremendous potential for what we as a culture can contribute or take away from it. Blogging is simply a way for voices normally insignificant persons to be heard by others who may have never met or even heard of the author. The rapid exchange of ideas often invokes quick and varied formation of ideas and processes.

If you think that online communication does not have a big effect on life nad culture changing events, consider the current “crisis” in Egypt. Many people with similar ideas came together to protest their concerns about their government. One of the Egyptian Government’s first acts was to cut the Internet knowing that any online collaboration from protesters could multiply their influence and advancements.

Seeing the changes in Egypt that possibly stemmed from or at least was assisted by online communication, some may think that a global revolution of democracy could lead us closer to a Utopian type of society. We may for a moment think that our problems can be solved if troubles and with them solutions are brought to light in nontraditional forums. However, differences also arise through blogging and online communications.

A dystopian society is rather unlikely as well. This is simply because many people will be able to bring to light many grievances they have against authority and government allowing for enough distrust to keep leaders inline.

All in all I personally believe that online forums and blogs can add to an average persons over all education about things they would normally not experience personally. If more moderated forums online were available for structured education, like academics, then we would likely see a whole lot more information available to the average individual. Fewer resources would be spent on a greater variety of education brought to the student. Formal education would be where we would likely see a more revolutionary and constructive change to society.

What did they use in writing The Matrix?

In one of my recent school papers, I described and attempted to explain the movie trilogy The Matrix. For those of you who may not have seen it, it is simply a story of a dystopian society where people are controlled by a massive machine driven computer program. If they try to escape from it, they are hunted down like animals. In studying this movie, I found that the Wachowski bothers that wrote it used both pathos and logos style of rhetoric to convey their message.

Usually, anytime the entertainment industry creates a performance to relay a message to the public, you can bet that they are playing on our emotions. Not that this is wrong in any way. It is just that simply their stories aim to entertain. If there is not an emotional response invoked, what good is the entertainment? Therefore, we can say a fair amount of pathos rhetoric has been used.

However, looking much closely and more seriously, in the movie series The Matrix, we see a great deal of logos rhetoric. Logos simply means logic or logical. They movies pointed out how man can become so reliant on something, in this case machines that he can simply get too comfortable and allow that thing to control his life. The movie pointed out how man used the machines for his survival and in the end, that machines were given enough control to use man for their survival. The logic, although perhaps a bit more science fiction than reality does use some interesting logic to point out possible flaws in mankind’s society.

Real Gamers Report

We have all again been graced with the presence of yet another of Blizzard Entertainment’s masterpiece creations with the recent global release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. I must admit that even I ran out and pre-ordered this addition to my great hobby. I also spent countless hours on the game prior to the release of Cataclysm to achieve the Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth mount that would help me to navigate the new “Old World” of Azeroth and also provide me with a way to dump my vendor trash and repair on the fly while leveling.

Now we have all heard of the release of the new expansion through various forms of media and promotions. I would like to reflect just briefly on the coverage of the event. Most of the media sources which we hear, see and read from day to day on this or any subject mainly comes from TV, papers and our favorite game and entertainment magazines with in house writers and staff that seem to become experts overnight on the subject. Not every time do you read a column or review from a true expert that has dedicated several hours a day over countless months to truly disclose the best clear view on the subject. From them we can see the positive improvements that Blizzard has provided us as well as the loyally honest criticism of its failures.

The online blog is not where we are likely to find the professional journalist nor the daily column writer. It is where we run into the loyal player. It houses those honest opinions from those who hours before were using their blogging keyboards to take on a raid, “PWN” in the arenas or even conduct virtual business on the trade channel while hiding in the auction house. When we visit and support these blogs, we find out what really makes gamers on the virtual but all to real World of Warcraft tick and what really peaks our interests. In a way, they are holding Blizzard accountable to the expectations of its loyal supporters.

Liz Skuthorpe on World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta blog #2 akes us through this new expansion as she plays through the pre-release Beta version. She gives us all insight as a player along with commentary of the pros and cons that she finds. Another example of a gamer reporting on games is Chad Lakkis at RipTen writing live while listening to the official announcement of the Cataclysm release.

These are just a few examples where you can get a up close and honest look into this online community from experts who know how point what really matters to gamers.