Mind of Rigel

Bad grammar makes me happy

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:49:22 -0400

A lot of other grammar Nazis have this angry, unpleasant approach to those who cannot fully harness the English language due to flaws in its use. I can’t really get angry at people who misuse grammar because they propose such funny things when taken literally. For example, on Facebook, I noticed someone say “To cute,” and I thought, “Thank you for conjugating the verb ‘cute’ for me! Now I’m ready for my English test.” Already known by those who read Hyperbole and a Half is the term “alot.” I invite everybody to check it out. I remember the first time someone typed “Your stupid” to me, to which I replied “What about my stupid? Is he misbehaving again?”

The Observer's Incredible Flaw

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 02:36:07 -0500

An important characteristic of humanity is our uncanny ability to completely inaccurately judge objects or people by how they look. For example, a job interview becomes futile after the first 12 seconds. This is a byproduct of our need to analyze things in order to get an informational code on the things we come across, because our only good automatic memory system allows us to recall faces very distinctly. On this note, it’s also why we see faces in inanimate objects like electrical outlets and burritos. Because of the way I look, people assume three basic things about me:

1. I am smart because I wear a shirt with buttons and comparatively unattractive glasses

2. I eat meat and other animal products because I’m tall and require additional protein

3. I play video games because I am constantly around people who do.

All of these assumptions are retarded by the very definition of the word “assumption.” In rebuttal to these claims, I state the following: clothing is not an indicator of intelligence, height is not an indicator of specific food consumption (because it is not the “most protein,” it is the “optimum amount of protein,” and the appropriate metabolic genetics), and friends are not indicators of hobbies. Admittedly, I like to think of myself as being at least well-informed, and I’ve been know to play a bit of Starcraft 2, but these things are true for completely different reasons. I have also been asked whether or not I dress the way I do for religious reasons.

Moral of the story is, you can’t judge a book by its cover, and sometimes you can’t judge a book at all because it is poorly-written or lying, like most of the books I read.

It’s a metaphor. Get it? Because people are confusing? Yeah.

Flame War

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:17:16 -0500

So recently a video was created, entitled “Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus.” It’s received a lot of positive review, and all counterarguments have been shot down, mostly by the words “fuck” and “you.” As a reasonable person and acclaimed skeptic, this video has not just slightly damaged, but entirely removed my faith in humanity. This is because at no point in the video or any other defence videos is it made clear why Jesus and Christianity deserve special treatment.

To be clear, by definition Christianity became a religion as soon as people wrote down an irrational but rigid belief system in the bible in the 3rd century. On another note, this was near the same time that images of Jesus had beards added to them, when beards went back into style, but that’s not important.

What’s important is that I now better understand the degree to which people are religious. Apparently, the majority of people are not in fact without religion, but have convinced themselves that their religion somehow doesn’t count, simply because they have been so heavily indoctrinated that they cannot properly empathize with different people.

Feedback

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 09:38:59 -0500

I haven’t posted anything for awhile because honestly, I have little motivation to do so.

Anyway, there’s this unit in Starcraft 2 called the High Templar. It is a “spellcaster” unit whose main purpose is to kill large groups of infantry with electrical storms. However, it has a secondary ability that is the funnest thing you will ever do, called Feedback.

In Starcraft, all spellcasters automatically regenerate energy, and when it gets to a certain point you can use it on fun stuff depending on the unit. Feedback takes away all energy on a target, and for every point of energy taken away, one point of damage is dealt. It’s meant to kill other spellcasters.

The reason Feedback is the funnest thing you will ever do is because you can basically just click on your enemy’s units and they explode instantly. It feels like having ultimate power in a multiplayer game.

A Grand Night Out

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:24:43 -0500

On Thursday evening there was a formal dance, attended by all who had five dollars and three hours to spare. I examined some interesting things about the dance that were irritatingly influential on the activities that took place. Firstly, the specification that it is a “formal” dance is unnecessary if the atmosphere is totally unfitting; secondly, an aura of confusion and awkwardness was created by the sheer volume of music, disallowing vocal communication and therefore any form of honesty and comfort; and thirdly, I noticed these things during the dance and at the time they pissed me off. Still, ‘tis better to be pissed off than pissed on. Hence I endured.

Despite these large factors, I enjoyed the dance quite a lot, because it gave me a chance to interact with many people I know in a different environment, allowing me to know them better. I like knowing more things, and more things I certainly knew after coming to this lovely event. I’ll definitely attend future dances, even if the music is generated by accelerated cylinders passing through the room at the speed of sound, generating a wave so powerful that it interrupts electrical signals.

... That was stupid

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:21:07 -0400

Oh damnit. Damnit. No, no, no. NO.

Don’t you hate it when you get slightly curious about the life of someone you once loved and you realize that you might accidentally love them again and you try to stop looking at the many times in which they didn’t actually need you but you wish they did? Then you realize that this is essentially an invasion of another’s privacy and that you should just forget about the wonderful times you had but you remember that you promised her you wouldn’t?

Damnit, Rigel. It’s not even funny how stupid it was for you to go on Facebook tonight.

Accidentally Offensive

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:47:36 -0400

I was meandering ‘round the dark corridors of Facebook just now. I was writing an insightful little paragraph about the cooperation of freedom, thought, and war on a beautiful and almost grammatically correct poem about unnecessary fighting. It occurred to me that actually, I was directly implying that the freedom of thought is the major cause of war, which is true. Then I thought, “Whoa, Rigel! People are going to take this the wrong way and assume that you support some totalitarian dictatorship distopian party with no freedom!” As such, I consequently deleted the post because of my fear of offending people.

I did a similar thing on quite a few posts when I realized that people will think that I’m a sociopath for not mindlessly submitting to contradictory philosophies such as “I like peace, money, cars, and a healthy planet to enjoy it all on.” NO. Your opinions don’t work. They cause more friction between each other than tectonic plates, and I will disprove their validity as quickly as obsidian slices through a gerbil.

Fortunately on Tumblr, my “audience” ranges from zero to two, so I can say whatever the fuck I want. Love you guys. :D

Invisible Processes

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:22:50 -0400

In Starcraft 2 (the RTS game that many people love), there is a unit known as the Void Ray. It is a flying “Surgical-strike craft” that happens to be overpowered, imbalanced and awesome against everything in the game. Some benevolent, knight-like gamers such as myself make vows to not build any Void Rays in a game, because they annoy the crap out of people.

But as you play the game and as you build your noble army of noble little soldiers, you realize that you have built a substantial amount of Void Rays. You don’t know how it happened. You don’t know when it happened. It just did. You built Void Rays, you frigging noob.

A similar thing in real life happened to me just now. I discovered that I was wearing large-framed black glasses, a pink and purple striped scarf, and a light green dress shirt. My Tumblr and Facebook pictures are machines from games you’ve probably never heard of. I listen to music written by Ludique, David Orr, Evan LE NY, and ZUN. Has anyone ever heard of any of these things? No. You might say they’re pretty far underground, metaphorically of course.

My god, I’m a … a … an independent person with unique properties who can think for themselves! How awful!

Failure of Slang

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:43:06 -0400

Today I was rather miffed to discover that the terms “very unique” and “over-exaggerate” are still very much in business. My criticism for these terms is not well recognized, but it is pretty frequent as many of my enemies will tell you.

Let’s begin with very unique. Unique means one of a kind; a single, different aberration of everything else. “Very” is fortunately only a redundancy and doesn’t even compare to the term over-exaggerate in its ability to confuse.

Exaggerate could mean to overstate beyond truthfulness, but it can also mean to enlarge abnormally. It has an infinite range of enlargement because it is a verb that has to be applicable in all relevant situations. Having such a range, “over” becomes useless, but it also becomes mathematically impossible when both words are used to their full potential. When this happens, I get two sets of infinity. I don’t just get one, I get fucking two. Remember those days in elementary school when you would have a primitive little debate with your friends and one of you would start using terms like “infinity plus one” or “infinity times infinity?” Yeah, well we never grew up, which is nice, but also extremely irritating.

This is a good example of a failure of slang. Slang is used mostly to shorten the descriptions of things by making them easier to say, shorter, or euphemisms. With these two totally redundant and astoundingly prominent terms, we have added another 4 total syllables to our already unnecessarily complex language.

Or perhaps it’s just that my vocabulary and grammatical prowess is overpowering my ability to concentrate on actual problems.

No pressure, but everyone should probably listen to this every...

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 23:14:01 -0400

No pressure, but everyone should probably listen to this every second of every day for the rest of their lives.

Binary Fashion

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:20:43 -0400

There is a misconception that there is some sort of comfortable medium between formal and informal clothes. This is of particular interest to me because I happen to reside almost exclusively in this middle zone. I wear dress shirts, black jeans and occasionally a hoodie with the word “Trombone” inscribed on the arm. Contrary to popular opinion, this is not acceptable as formal wear and is far from being close to casual wear.

Fashion does not have an analog measurement; it is binary, and I have somehow indulged myself into the uncomfortable medium between the two sides.

Mengsk and Celestia

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 23:53:44 -0400

Many people have heard of the show “My Little Pony Friendship is Magic,” and I rather enjoy watching it for reasons beyond most people’s comprehension. In the first 2 episodes of season 2, there is an antagonist named Discord and his goal is to ultimately bring chaos to the land of Equestria, ruled by Princess Celestia, a supposed deity of some description. A funny aspect of Celestia is that she is both a pegasus pony, a unicorn and a godlike figure, and I thusly compare her to Ganesh. But that’s not especially relevant. The point is that Celestia will always send out lower minions to complete whatever task she needs completed, such as stopping anything from a vicious insect swarm to a frigging dragon. Another point is that Discord was eventually imprisoned in stone, so who do you think is telling the story of the awful things he did? Many of them must be greatly exaggerated or complete lies. Another point is that Celestia banished her sister to the moon for a thousand years because she was apparently some sort of threat.

Another thing I do is play a lot of Starcraft 2. In the Starcraft storyline, humans (known as “terrans”) have occupied a far away area called the Koprulu Sector. The Sector is ruled by Arcturus Mengsk, a revolutionary who overthrew the previous oppressive government and created his own oppressive government. He basically created new terran culture, his first similarity to Celestia. If anything threatens his power, he metaphorically banishes it to the moon. Here’s a quote from when he was launching a major attack on the original terran government: “I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss, or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me.” This is the second similarity.

The actual protagonist in Starcraft is Jim Raynor, a freedom fighter who is always portrayed as a “terrorist” by Mengsk. Apparently, Raynor causes “panic and chaos” in the Koprulu Sector. Sound familiar? We should always be careful about what characters are actually evil in a story. I personally think that Mengsk and Celestia are pretty malicious and that Discord and Raynor are misunderstood. If you watch My Little Pony or play Starcraft 2, you’ll see many other reasons why order and harmony are sometimes not what they appear to be.