I'm a clever guy who comes up with witty titles for his blogposts...or not

So yesterday I finally caved and went out and picked up the new Harry Potter book. It was a quick read, probably somewhere between ten and twelve hours' total reading time all things considered. At any rate, it's pretty good, people die, and as expected, bad stuff befalls our heroes. Thing is, after reading George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, I can't really say that I was much affected by the death. After the way Martin sets up the audience, and then kills off half of the main cast in the first book, a character's death means very little to me anymore. If anything, it becomes a rare day that a character doesn't die, so, here's the happy ending: Harry's not dead at the end! Hooray! I've spoiled the book for everybody! Even better, the dead HP character gets a funeral instead of a traitor's death followed by the usual corpse desecration! And now, I have tantalized you enough. Mwa ha ha ha.

In other news, I got a call the other day about a job with a company called Banker's Life. Assuming that this was some sort of banking firm, I called them back to set up a phone interview, and then did some research. Turns out they sell life insurance. When looking at their job postings, all they talked about were extravegant rewards, unlimited income, etc. Nothing in there about duties and responsibilities, and so my spider-sense started tingling. I could see one foot, but the other foot was just waiting to drop somewhere. I figured that it would most be likely commission only. I did some further digging on the internet, and discovered numerous stories in newspapers of this company (or its agents, at any rate) selling inferior policies to older people at prices that were higher than the customers' exsiting policies. At that point, I knew that this was not the sort of environment that I could work in with a clean conscience, as the individuals involved did so, if not at the behest of the company, but at least with the consent of the company, and that the company could turn a blind eye to this sort of thing just turned me off. So yeah, still looking for the job. We'll see what comes of this.

Daymn

I would not be surprised if many of you knew of this before I did, so it is probably old news. No doubt most of you are familiar with the infamous GTA series. If you are reading this, chances are you are a geek of some variety. Those of you who know me also know that I enjoy video games and do not subscribe to the whole reactionary "video games is the devil" rhetoric that fills our political airwaves, when they aren't arguing over other crap. However, I believe that Tycho Brahe, over at Penny Arcade said it best, namely, that "defending video games more often than not means defending Rockstar." The latest furor over GTA is the so-called Hot Coffee Mod, which basically allows you to play a sexual mini-game. It was originally discovered on the PC version, thanks to a mod found online. People got worked up over it, but if that were all, it would be no big deal, yes? After all, the game publishers are not responsible for the things created by the Modding community. The real difficulty came when it was discovered that this same material could be accessed on the PS2 version. Because the PS2 runs on a DVD-ROM, there is no way for somebody to create new code for complex animations and the like. In other words, the stuff must already be present within the game. Granted, accessing the game requires a series of codes and an external peripheral such as Game Shark, but the fact remains that this material was already embedded in the game. In short, this means that Rockstar's initial "blame the hackers" excuse is false. It's getting harder and harder to defend them, really. Fortunately, the other side isn't much better, as they condemned GTA for its depictions of "brutal murders of women." Wait a second. GTA is all about indiscriminant destruction. Shouldn't brutal murders of anybody be a problem? Why is the brutal murder of a woman more heinous than the brutal murder of a man? In many ways, this seems to be a sort of odd double standard. On one hand, it is suggesting that because the victim is a woman, she is somehow more helpless than a man. However, this is really just an assumption founded on the traditional view that women are weaker than men. It's just a generalization that holds little meaning, as individual cases always differ. It's not that women are any more virtuous than men, it's just that we tend to want to give them the benefit of the doubt more often than not. On the other hand, if the problem is that one believes that women are inherently worth more than men, it is justifying a sort of female chauvinism that is just as offensive as male chauvinism. The only reason to make the distinction between simple brutal murders and brutal murders of women is to make an appeal to the emotions of a particular segment of one's audience. However, when it comes to reality and philosophy, they need to remember: hurt feelings don't count. And remember, rhetoric sucks. S9 that's my rant.