Shithead Hall of Fame Inductee: Kathleen Parker

I’m proud to admit the first female in to the shithead Hall of Fame: Kathleen Parker. I needed the national FERVOR over her leaving of the CNN show Parker-Spitzer to calm before I emblazoned her inside it’s vaunted halls of mediocrity. Maybe you are wondering what one like Ms. Parker would have to do to even be considered for the hall of fame considering her bona fides: Pulitzer prize winning writing, national syndication in hundreds of papers, blah blah blah. Namely, the Hall of Fame board recognizes her for the most American of American traits: Mediocrity failing upwards.

Yes, I’ve always had a bone to pick with Kathleen Parker, and it’s mostly to do with her limp-wristed political writing and frothy feminism. She correctly acknowledged she won her Pulitzer prize for Palin bashing (which she then took back in some many words/columns in the weeks to follow her initial bashing on Palin, but once again there’s no Pulitzer for rhetorical consistency}. I was also just as surprised that she was tapped to co-host a show on CNN (which isn’t surprising of them) with Eliott Spitzer. Who we all know is very intelligent, but sense he was mired with scandal makes his intellectual fortitude about on par with whatever Ms. Parker would bring to the table, right? And wouldn’t you know it, they’re politically dissimilar, perfect CNN!

But this article isn’t about CNN’s resume for the Shithead Hall of Fame. I’m sure you’ll be voted in one day CNN, a girl can hope!

Parker-Spitzer, while not a ratings juggernaut, did have one piece of silver lining: it exposed Ms. Parker’s incompetence as a co-host. The great thing about actually thoughtful, intelligent people is that they are adaptable. Hence, when Spitzer was doing solo shows the ratings doubled, he could hold his own with any, and hell, the guy is on point for the most part. Parker is a pundit that needs a leash. This is why you don’t see Sarah Palin outside of Fox News. If given the run of the table they are unfocused and since they don’t have any real opinions (cherish the thought), can’t deliver in anything but lead on sound bites. These sound bites are just merely crumbs from the interviewers’/host’s table and are never the prevailing thought of the pundit. The host will be like “I hate gnarled, hairy toes,” then people like Palin or Parker just chime in with the “Yes, those are bad!” to give the essence of group think to the argument. She was timid in her co-hosting duties, and rarely, if ever disagreed with anything Spitzer argued. She’s the one from the right wing, huh? To be fair, she does say she’s “a little to the right of center” which means she’s flip floppy at best, and indecisive at worst. These are great qualities to bring to a crossfire debate type show.

Ms. Parker also likes to come from that right wing thought that if you’re published in a paper that that somehow makes you a journalist, which then gives you some form of integrity. This is the exception and not the rule; as I’m sure many viewers of the Parker-Spitzer show soon realized. She writes about culture and politics: two things that are never etched in stone, therefore you can write about them as the wind blows. Again, consistency isn’t one of her strong suits so what better topics to base your writing career on? It’s how Pat Buchanan can say on MSNBC that rich fat cats and corporations are destroying the middle class, then write an editorial admonishing public unions for collective bargaining and teacher for striking on the future generations and setting a bad example.

I guess all the blame can’t really be put on Ms. Parker for her disastrous Parker-Spitzer run. CNN has a weird hyperbole fetish and an intense desire to seem “fresh” and “With it”. Like all those Piers Morgan Tonight spots where he says he’s going to tell it like it is and ask the hard questions. Then you watch his show (when he actually has a guest) and it’s a just a British dude engaging in polite conversation. So when you try to frame your debate show with the “He’s a Liberal New York lawyer and she’s a Conservative D.C. writer…sparks are gonna fly, you better bring your welding visor America”, you can’t be to surprised that the so saying “slightly right of center” isn’t going to exactly clash with a common sense, or even informed argument.

But Mr. Mayor, you maybe asking, didn’t you say she’s guilty of failing upwards, what do you mean? Here is what I mean America: people like her are needed to fill the void in newspaper editorials, or fodder for the sound bite 24 hour news cycle. She’s paid to have an opinion on EVERYTHING, it’s a great way to take up column space. She’s also that much needed right wing skirt that makes it seem like Republicans don’t hate women and want them to stay in the kitchen, making babies. Sometimes, her poignancy can surprise you, for example the Palin bashing. But when asked to foment an argument, they deflate so fast and so quick, that you have no choice but to call them out. They can’t embarrass you on national television like that ever, or for very long. That’s why she only lasted 4 ½ months on the Parker-Spitzer program. She couldn’t adapt so she sunk, and then had to “focus on her writing”. Really Ms. Parker? Was there something so burning inside you about the state of something no one really cares about in the national discourse that you couldn’t say in on your nightly program?

People like Ms. Parker shape the public discourse. They can be great providers of information if they so wish, but yet again without any rhetorical consistency you gain nothing as a public. If we wanted wishy-washy, hypocritical commentary we can just look to our congress for that buffoonishness. Hell, we have an entire “News Channel” dedicated to feeding a hive mind falsities. I don’t think it’s too much to ask of our punditry and talking heads to actually come to the table with facts, or at the very least, accountability for their actions. Ms. Parker’s career has been one of fluff and little substance, so we can’t really be surprised to find her lacking substance on anything of depth.

Perhaps, going back to the Parker-Spitzer debacle, CNN promised Ms. Parker that the show would be a pool of marshmallow’s and she wouldn’t have to do much but look pretty, disagree from time to time, and not have to do any heavy lifting; much like her column writing duties. They didn’t even screen test her or Spitzer to see if the two could in fact work as structured. I think the screen test alone could’ve given sufficient answer to that. She left the show, supposedly, because they failed to deliver on the promise to move the show to more cultural/entertainment venue’s, her bread and butter. This is where I can fault Ms. Parker for her lack of adaptability and the core reason she’s in the Shithead Hall of Fame today.

Can you say “over privileged, home-schooled, xenophobe” kids?

I have to say that my favorite thing when reading an opinion piece by anyone associated with the fundamentalist Christians (and the right wing in general), is the lack of relevant statistics and/or facts. Can’t find a pertinent fact to back up your bald-faced horseshit? Just make up a vague time/place/idea/person/fact completely without source and continue on your journey. The backbone, nay cornerstone, of most of these nincompoops is hyperbole. It’s practice, performed at an obscene level of loudness, just bulldozes your senses where I could honestly see someone getting duped by this nonsense, and especially if they are on the same wavelength as the author of the piece. It becomes harder and harder to digest reality when you only have the stomach for narrow minded hyperbole fantasy land tidbits.

Enter one Elijah Friedeman, from The Millennial Perspective (a fundamentalist hive mind resume available for Conservative Think Tank whoring and some vacation bible school pizza parties). He’s also about 17/18 years old, yet another of these right wing wunderkinds who somehow have the intellectual maturity to understand such concepts as indoctrination and other first world problems that face our nation. He’s also familial to the American Family Radio, so he didn’t have to work up to this point in his budding editorial career.

So I found it awesome ironic that he started his editorial “Can you say ‘indoctrination’ kids?” with this gem:

“Recently I crossed the threshold from fact-based reality into a bastion of Obama-loving denial.”

In this piece he goes to a public school, and to his horror discovers that the children are being forced to worship and exalt Obama. He doesn’t name the public school, mostly because he experienced it in a fever dream, and partially because it does not exist. If it had a name I’m sure it was Robert Kelly Elementary. The teachers are all wearing starched khaki uniforms, it’s less a school than a crudely constructed aircraft hanger. There are loudspeakers saying things that Mr. Friedeman supposedly found “emblazoned on a wall”.

He is struck by the fact that a sitting presidents picture is hung up at all. This is his first clue that something is amiss. Unlike Mr. Friedeman, I went to public school my entire childhood. The sitting president ALWAYS had a picture hung up somewhere in the school.. So if his logic is true, then I’ve somehow been indoctrinated by the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations to exalt them and….wait, that DOES explain a few things! This is why I cry out “It’s Supply side Economics!” and “Tear down this wall” in my sleep sometimes!

He blames the putting up of this “memorial” on a zealot…I mean teacher or school administration. His evidence is that all the accolades to the president are typed out and laminated. Okay, first of all, the typed out part? Have you seen a first graders hand writing Mr. Friedeman? I mean, had you gone to a real public school you’d see the evidence that it’s mostly fierce gibberish at best. You’d be surprised the gymnastics the shapes of letters go through via the hand of a 7 year old. Secondly, laminated? Do you realize how many items the public schools laminate? And as an aside…have you seen a first grader’s clothes after a typical school day? Colors like that don’t exist in the rainbow yet somehow reside as stains on children’s clothing. The lone bright side of his lamentations is the fact that if one of these glorious displays were erected for George W. Bush he’d be against it too. So I guess we can give him points for consistency.

Then he moves forward with the noticing of a display of student essays. To his dismay these aren’t about themes from American History or great American Inventors (I’m catching a theme here). Never mind that he’s at this public school in a vacuum and surely these mad scribblings have been here since AT LEAST January 2009. The topic of the essays are how the students could help the president better the nation. Mr. Friedeman is again devastated that a fifth grader, who we all know has great interest in our nations politic, did not say they would help the president by opposing his policies. Mr. Friedeman the most pressing problems that face our nations 10 year olds is: lack of toy in Kids Meal, the plague known by it’s street name Cooties, and the existence of Santa Claus.

Finally, he stumbles around the campus till he garners an opportunity to ask an imaginary fifth grader Tea Party demagoguery…er I mean American History questions. The child doesn’t know that America once belonged to another country, never heard of the Revolutionary War, and woe of all woes Lexington and Concord. He concludes that this is why the politics of youth are so damaged.

I’m sure Fifth graders are taught the early history of America. In fact a cursory search of Google, “Are Fifth Graders Taught American History”, displays a lesson plan for a fifth grade class. Did Mr. Friedeman check the parking lot of Robert Kelly Elementary to see if a short bus was parked outside? And again with this old-timey rhetoric of the youth movement somehow being a bane to society what with it’s passionate politicking!? Oh you can die for you country in illegitimate, disregarded wars; but heaven forbid you actually get passionate about your politics and vote for a black man.

Mr. Friedeman could’ve used this incendiary expose of our public schools as a stepping stone to why our school kids are so uneducated. This is the fact that betrays his age and lack of skill as a shim sham salesman. He could’ve assailed the under funded school districts, that underpay their teachers. The over stuffed classrooms that allow the struggling children to fall through the cracks unnoticed. I guess they don’t really cover causality in Friedeman household.

Mr. Friedeman, from what little information I’ve gathered on the internets (I learned it from watching you Mr. Friedeman), was home schooled. He has been indoctrinated to sell shim sham from his family’s general store. He practices the age old art of fear baiting, narrow minded fundamentalism that has propelled some of the worst morality battles in recent times.

To top this off I have to say what the hell do you know Mr. Friedeman? Have you even started college yet? Of course you’ll be going, I’m sure all your tuition and whatnot is already secured and even graduate school, if you’re so inclined as to not just go ahead and run the shim sham radio empire of backwards leaning evangelical couching antagonism known as your brand of Christianity. I assume you will, during your college years, assail the very education system you are benefiting from with it’s Socialist indoctrinating Professors and the myriad of women that would be better off standing next to a kitchen counter making your dinner, instead of educating themselves.

It's Always Greener on the Social Media Side

If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from Game Developers Conference last week is the fallacy that mobile/social game players are some how going to transition to the console market as new game users/players looking for a bigger experience. I liken this ideology to the gamer trying to get their significant other to play games with them beyond the usual game(s) they latch on to.

A lot of gamers (for lack of a better term) try in vain to get their significant others to broaden their horizons beyond the simple games we introduce them to. Or more likely, they have an affinity towards say a Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario game, but beyond that it becomes the “there’s too many buttons” or “this is way too complicated”. Granted, there are some marginal success’, but for the most part you just have to hand them games you think they can handle, and hope that they will at least appreciate your hobby and not ostracize it as a bad habit.

The need to expand the new player market is a tale as old as time, wrought with much unsuccess. I still recall fondly the days before the need of a 30 minute tutorial on how to play a game. I still read the instruction manual, even though these days it’s about four pages long and most of that is the different languages version of the controller map. I don’t think it’s because gamers are dumb and need to their hand held, but I do believe that developers are trying in vain to corner a market that at the very least is fickle about their gameplay experience, and at the most can’t muster the attention to enjoy a lengthy interactive medium like the boxed copy of a console game.

I’m not trying to say I don’t think these social media gamers can’t go hand in hand with the more “hardcore” gamers of today, but developers need to understand that for the most part, their time is better spent not preaching to the choir, and plying those of us (“hardcore‘) with tropes from the social media side of games: the shortened bite sized experience, the micro transactions, simplistic game mechanics, on and on.

After spending much of the past decade getting people to sign up for the high definition experience, those of us who applied, I think, need to be rewarded for our efforts. To me this means cut it out with the four hour single player campaigns, or if you are going to pull that bologna, don’t charge full price and instead make the ratio of cost to game balanced and less price gouging. I know you might be saying “Mr. Mayor, isn’t the inflated cost of the game to offset the cost of the higher budget games what with their HD graphics and such?”, and to that I must concede a little. But at this point developers need to understand the audience they are developing for and make their game accordingly.

I’m getting off topic. I don’t think that the bulk of the social media gamers are going to transition in to the HD gaming crowd. They aren’t going to shell out the hundreds of dollars for the high definition television and many gigs of hard drive based consoles, superficial HDMI cables, that developers insist make their games worth the investment. They’re accustomed to free or micro transaction method, and that certainly doesn’t have much of a foothold in the console game arena. Coupling this with developers now insisting on nickel-and-diming their fans with downloadable content (DLC), in a lot of games that is already on the game disc proper and is merely “unlocked“ for enjoyment. The jury is still out on a lot of the pricing mechanics associated with DLC, most of which I think is way overpriced!

The greatest asset of the gaming industry as a whole is the fact that it’s ever changing, constantly moving. I don’t think social media gaming is a fad, but I don’t think it can sustain the glut of bloat ware that is cresting on the horizon. I do believe, however, that a lot of great games are going to be pushed on to the wrong crowd, and that a better understanding of that demographic should be heeded by developers looking to exploit it for financial gain. The games industry has a storied history on one’s game success begetting dozens of ill-conceived, bastard clones that jam up the landscape and ruin entire genres of games. For every Mario that blazes a trail there is a Gex just around the corner gumming up the works.

Much like the frustrated boyfriend that’s trying to get his girlfriend to play Halo co-op with him, developers need to bask in the glow of the tiny victories that may bring new sheep to the flock, and not try to replicate, the inundate them with samey experiences when they’re trying to expand their gaming palette. There’s a pretty plain reason why parents think games are pretty much all the same and easily confuse a Cabela hunting game with a Call of Duty title, it’s got shooting in it, it’s got loud noises…must be what Timmy was looking for. Aside from that, developers still need to cater and care for the fans that got them to this point: us “the hardcore”. Developers have plenty of slack to work with from our end. We don’t mind having more people to share our hobby with. We have been your acolytes since we were single digit aged.

Shouting Down From an Ivory Tower of Shitty Writing

This is probably going to be the essay I use to get in to the crappy old man gentlemen’s club when I’m AARP aged, but bear with me my beloved readers. You know that I don’t care much for the old people and their old ways, but on one thing I think we can both agree on is that young people without kids can shut the fuck up about parenting.

I’m reminded of this need to tell these whippersnappers to shut the fuck up every time I read a college newspapers or one of these late twenty something managing editor’s who’ve just entered act two of their adult lives and suddenly have become the expert on whatever topics their reading pamphlets about. Mostly marriage, the inevitability of kids, home finance, you get the idea. What’s most annoying is all the prefacing that goes before they began to speak out of the echo chamber known as their ass with the: “I know that I shouldn’t be saying this, but I’m gonna, cuz I can and I think that I have an idea so I’m gonna” motif, then proceed to baste their lack of intelligence with delicious hyperbole, and I really hope they have kids soon so they can be too tired to think and just churn out the clichéd “my baby’s poops” or “I’m so fucking tired, and I’m still at the presses crying next to a spool of paper stock cuz I was up all night with the baby”. Ceaseless, worn tripe that fills our nations papers!

Here we have Tommy Felts, a up and coming Managing Editor. (Preface)As a sidebar, I’d like to comment about the soul patch in his byline picture:

You can’t honestly think you’re being taken seriously with that thing are you Tommy? It’s 2011! Maybe this picture was taken when you were stupider…erhm, I mean younger, but still it looks like you’re trying to grow an asshole on your face.

Here he is with his take on the whole parenting thing. It’s couched in the girls gone wild as of late, and his preface is great:
…I’ve been advised by readers in the past to steer clear of these [parenting] topics when writing. But, honestly, given the state of many youth today, the act itself of having children clearly doesn’t make a person an automatic expert on parenting. So, I figure I’m just as qualified to share my two cents.

First, I’m sure this is just a writing disease that affects those of current generations, but is he being paid by the word? As a managing editor I think he’d be the first to acknowledge that he could excise a bunch of these words in his editorials and still make his point. I’m just a humble blogging man, and I think my verbosity is most heinous. I understand Tommy, you have a Journalism degree, but this mish mash of ten dollar words and the inability to use the semicolon or comma is absurd. And, the whole “But comma” or “So comma” this is blog. website aggregate, page view money generating, AAA ball team writing junk! At the very least you’re in the AA ball club so cut it out with the lazy writing style.

You see, I’m already lining up my seat at the gentlemen’s club! I’ve gotten off course! Ahem.
The fact that he’s been advised and cares nothing for it is great. As it provides the perfect example of that prefacing buffoonery that plagues this generation of editorial writing. He goes on to correct course and twist in to a, in my opinion correct, critique of kids these days (including us!) being completely useless making adult decisions, lacking structure, being self-important ass wipes. Who will then go on to critique us when they get old enough to be the managing editor at a mid sized paper. Calling Generation X and Y cynical, blameless, blowhards who have a lot to say about everyone but themselves. At that point I will be old and not be able to hear because I blew out my eardrums listening to crappy rapcore music when I was their age. And, I’ll be hunting the most dangerous game!

While I adore and appreciate the temerity of ignorant people hopping in to unknown, choppy waters of topics they have the slightest grasp of, you have to be in the shit to really speak to it. It’s called armchair quarterbacking in certain parts. Sure you got a precursory knowledge of the game. Yes, you could’ve made that play, read that coverage, on and on. But you’re at home, with ability to see the entire play unfold. You have limitless time to read the play, then you can bask in the aftermath and know the true outcome. But, you weren’t there, and I’m sure if it was you, it’d probably turn out worse.

As grating as it is to read those articles where the parent writes about their shitheaded kids and horrid nicknames for their spouses, at least their’s is a common knowledge and understanding that when a twenty something starts trying to tell it like it is “just cuz” that I can’t help but think “Yea, no” and skip the editorial entirely. Truth is, you don’t know shit, and I don’t think you’re opinion of the topic is relevant in any way. Coupled with the fact that, in the cast of Tommy, it has to be coupled with a critique of previous generations to pad out a word count and actually make a point. No one’s surprised that Billy Ray Cyrus is a shitty dad. Honestly, how many kids with never present parents turn out to be well adjusted adults? Instead of disciplining children and actually trying to correct their behaviors we ply them with sedatives and push them through under funded, over worked public schools and then are surprised when they become the monsters we raised them to be?

Review: Fallen Footwear's Chief Skate Shoe

You would think that as any person of note: a basketball player, lacrosse goalie, snowboarder, BMX vert champion, skateboarder, that your signature shoe would be a thing of magnificence. The construction would be most paramount, assembled by a fleet of angels, sewn together with thread made from Minotaur fur, with needles carved from unicorn horns. The design would be meticulous, as if wearing them akin to clouds dancing around your feet, you never feel the earth because you are merely passing by. If you buy a pair of Jordan’s, they are well built and function great. They will not make you an actual Michael Jordan (much to the chagrin to un-athletic, score monster, vertically challenged twenty year-olds), but you will at least be able to wear them in a normal every day setting. Jamie Thomas, a supposedly well known skateboarder, and his shoe company Fallen Footwear, have riled me up to write a review of his signature shoe: The Chief. This shoe is the closest approximation to actually wearing a shoebox instead of the skate shoe that one could possibly get away with. On the list of features this shoe portends:

Jamie Thomas signature model. One would assume this means the man wears this shoe to do Xtreme events in, right? This seems to be a fabrication of facts, seeing as this shoe is such garbage in just average normal everyday wear and tear that I could not imagine trying to compete in any event, save beating someone with the shoe itself, to justify it’s crapiness.

Genuine heavy-duty suede, synthetic nubuck, and/or canvas upper. This statement reads more like it should start with a “Maybe has”. The and/or kind of gives the sentence a “feeble shrug” kind of vibe.

Asymmetric stabilizer for medial upper support. Padded tongue and collar for added comfort and support. Seeing as most purveyors of skate shoes target teenage boys and young adults I feel like this bullet point is more a jumble of podiatrist words to accentuate the fact that NONE of those things are true, except for the padded tongue and collar which is absurdly padded, and is actually the only good part about the shoes. Of course you’ll achieve stabilization if your foot is being crushed by the giant ass tongue of the shoe. It’s like a boot for a cast!

Vulcanized sole construction. Translation: There’s a zig-zaggy pattern on the bottom. Oh, and the logo! Oooooh! Yay industrial presses!

Soft EVA insole with full length latex layer. Yea, it’s in there, it’s soft, I don’t know what the hell an EVA is, but it does bunch up an awful lot! So if you like having that feeling of folded up sock/cardboard underneath your foot all day, you’re in luck! And it’s really annoying and there’s not much you can do about it.

Highly abrasion-resistant rubber outsole for enhanced wear and durability.
Translation most shoes are made with these specs. Also durability my ass: this is after ONE DAY of wear! This is a skate shoe people, this is EVERYDAY wear-n-tear! You’d think it’d be a little better in the durability department.

Gel heel insert for added shock absorption and impact cushioning. I moved this bullet point to last because it is where most of my rage lies. The whole genesis of this review was wrought from this abomination on skate shoe paradise. The apex of this shoe’s shit construction lies deep in the recess, under the heel, with the “gel insert”. First of all, I guess “gel” is a loosely defined word. It’s a lot shorter to write out than “shitty piece of shaved plastic that’s about 2 cm thick and provides actual no real benefit than to be hard and annoying to your heel”. Well, that wouldn’t really be blurb-able would it? It provides zero cushion and shock absorption! On top of this, the gel heel insert doesn’t even cover the heel, mostly just the center mass of your heel, thus adding to that giant pebble in your shoe feel. Now, if this was part of the insole, kind of like a Dr. Scholls, I could forgive it for it’s obtrusive nature and general crappiness. But no, it’s attached with some sort of epoxy, wherein, the damned thing SLIDES out from the place it’s supposed to be, and often will be found on the side of your heel, meanwhile the insole bunches up on itself with the epoxy creating a uncomfortable, warm, sticky foot nightmare! The glue/epoxy gets all over your heel, your socks, anything unfortunate enough to find itself down there. Mind you, this is just from everyday wear. I’m not carving up the skate park, and woe to me if I would even begin to.
Upon removing these scourges from my shoe, I realized a new problem: There’s not really anything underneath the heel! The shoe now feels like it’s set at an angle, with no padding, save the sole, underneath the heel and then progressively more padding along the rest of the shoe. This really can’t be the case?!

This is completely nonfunctional as a skate shoe. Aside from it’s ability to lock your foot and ankle in to position as to not roll it, as I assume must happen to skaters a lot, it is a piece of garbage! Jamie Thomas should recall these shoes, or at least disavow any knowledge of having made this his signature model. It’s akin to buying what you think would be Slash’s Les Paul signature model, and when the package arrives it is a Ukulele with a piece of beef jerky crammed into the sound hole.

Verdict: Only for your most hated enemies birthday present, or to beat back feral animals if cornered in a dark alley.

Shithead Hall of Fame Inductee: Jack Krier

This is a column I’ve been pondering on for quite some time. It doesn’t necessarily need to start off with a bang, but it also needs enough steam to actually facilitate it’s singular presence as a column. Mind you, there are plenty of future shitheads lined up. But I wanted one that I could flex a little, and not seem to being instantly going for the jugular on celebrities, minor comedians, politicians, the usual ilk that spawns these pieces. So with that in mind, I submit the first ever shithead hall of fame inductee: Jack Krier.

Of course, you probably don’t know who this man is so I will enlighten you. He is the publisher of a myriad of small town papers in KS. His major bent is mostly an editorial where he rips off Jeff Foxworthy redneck musings, old timey grandiosity, small town fetish fever dreams, you get the idea. Typically his various papers editorial/opinion pages are packed with up to three of his musings. Aside from the collection essays, are usually two other editorials about the D.C. goings on. I have read letters to the editor wondering why he never writes about local things, seeing as his papers literally swamp most of the state. The answer is “he’s just so focused on the bigger picture”, etc. etc. I have the same question Jack Krier: Why not focus on the local government? Honestly, how many regurgitation's of the hypocritical, fear bating, ignorant, spreading conservative hive mind bog stink do we really need to be bombarded with?

Obviously not enough, it seems. Jack Krier is yet another old white dood with enough money and boredom to instead of going gently in to that night, buys up publishing and writes his saber rattling nightmares, and knows full well he isn’t alone in his ramblings. I get it old man, you’re scared, and you have every right to your ignorance, it’s America dammit! But you do have the responsibility, to my mind, as a publisher of multiple papers, to enlighten and not spread your ignorance as fact. The temerity that you couch your bullshit in the “I’m just saying, you know me: old man, small town Jack” to support your nonsense is even more sickening than your poisonous rhetoric.

Much of my rage isn’t directly at Jack Krier. No, it’s mostly directed at these old white farts who will not rest until they shake every last ounce of pent up bile at the rest of us, and our need to rid ourselves of these roadblocks to progress and time. I respect their elderliness, I respect the time it took for them to foment their ignorance and save enough money to buy themselves a soapbox to prattle from. But I don’t have to listen to you ignore the decades of progress the younger generations are trying to stake out. You older generations kicked the proverbial can, and now want to tell us to fix it. You demand that we have boogiemen to fear and wage war against, and frankly I’ve spent most of my life fearing something or another, and am very, very tired of hiding from a boogieman that isn’t there. Sure, I’ll agree that the threat is very much real, but the amount I let it consume my life and my peers is completely up to us.

You can at least concede that your parents generation thought you were going to ruin the country too, unfortunately for us, you continued the same bullshit they were selling decades before you were given power.

This is the problem with the baby boomers and the old geezers, these generations are such that these old white doods will never let go. There will always be another scared white old man a few years younger, just waiting to tell the other generations what for. We as the current progressive generation need to stop chalking up their xenophobia with culture cuteness, and call them the bigots they are. Just because you live in a small town, doesn’t mean you get to feign ignorance to spread your hate. We need to let them know: “Yes, this is how things are going to be!” and to use some of their verbiage, “If you don’t like it, then you can get the fuck out!”.

Review: Dead Space 2

The Big takeaway: More Dead Space for those itching for a little horror house scares, and dismemberment gameplay.

The Little takeaway: A fierce rental at best. The 9 hour campaign is great, but the multiplayer lacks the depth to keep you coming back. The team based multiplayer obviously isn’t very fun if you don’t work together.

Review:
It’s been three years since Isaac Clarke had a wild ride on the crazy express, also known as the USG Ishimura from the first Dead Space. What with the dead girlfriend talking to him, he also had to disassemble a large portion of the crew that had been turned in to the hideous creatures known as the necromorphs. He dealt with abysmal asteroid shooting for a few minutes here and there, then blew up the marker what was causing all the problems to begin with.

In those three years after, Isaac Clarke has been absent-mindedly building another marker on a space colony called The Sprawl nestled away on the Saturn moon Titan. The game begins and he’s all straight jacketed up and living in crazy town from the looks of things. Dead Space 2 starts off with a bang, like any good haunted house. You won’t pick up any weapons for a good twenty minutes, and are dispatched right smack dab in a necromorph outbreak. It’s eye-grabbing, controller clenching good times from the word go, which is great, but that rush wears off pretty quickly as we settle in to the meat of the game.

Controls haven’t changed much since the first game, but the speed has. Isaac moves a lot faster than he did the last time around, it has to be all the space fiber he‘s been eating. It may be a compensation move for the multiplayer, but it’s really nice to be able to run away from the bad guys or through some of the larger areas in the Sprawl. This especially rings true in the final chapters of the game, where there’s just not enough time to stand back and lay waste to all your opponents. The zero gravity segments also get the speed treatment, adding rocket thrusters to Isaac’s suit. While they’re not as plentiful as the first game’s zero-g sections, they still are a lot of fun and gorgeous to boot!

Graphically, what this game does with lighting is phenomenal. Let’s face it, developers are squeezing every bit of horsepower out of these consoles, and it shows here. When the game opens up and shows off some outer space Saturn, or when you are around a furnace flame that bounces shadows around, putting you on edge as you rumble around the Sprawl, it looks great. The facial animations leave a lot to be desired, and come across as stiff. I would go so far as to say cartoonish at certain junctions, but it’s still fairly solid and doesn’t detract from the overall graphical package. There’s very few human characters to interact with, and for getting the point across, they’re fine.

The “puzzles” in this iteration leave a lot to be desired. I haven’t played the first Dead Space in a long while, but I could’ve swore they were better than this. Most of the “puzzles” are a “this thing is broken/missing, you need to find that corresponding piece then flip x switch to move forward”. Then you do that, monsters pop out, then you move forward. It’s pretty much: Explore, Shoot Monsters, Flip Switch, Puzzle (Enemy Pops Out), Restock items, Repeat. There is also a severe lack of set piece boss battles in this game. The game feints at the start to some epic boss encounters, then they dry up, and you're left just fighing stronger versions of the usual brand of necromorph. Compared to the first game, this is a bit of a let down and could've went further to spice up the pacing of the game, a la the first Dead Space.

Since the game is so short, there’s never really a feeling of redundancy. It took me about 9 hours, and I was honestly taking my time, reading/listening to everything, exploring, on and on. I guess the idea is that the multiplayer will pick up the slack.

Fortunately, the multiplayer works very well and isn’t a tacked on operation. It’s essentially team, objective based gameplay. One side is human doing objectives, the other side is necromorphs trying to stop them. There is no difference in the humans aside from color of suit. The necromorphs come in a variety of flavors, you have various necromorph types like the puker, the spitter, and two others I didn't really mess with. The game has your now standard leveling up system where you unlock new powers, guns or suits. The only real problem with the multiplayer is a lack of explaining clearly what each necromorph can do. The load screen in between matches enlightens from time to time, but you pretty much have to intuit what you can do. This also rings true for some of the objectives,. Sometimes it’s not very clear about where to go, who has what item to do what thing, what to defend, etc. Aside from that, if you do not act as a team in multiplayer, the experience isn’t very good. It took a group of us several matches to finally start communicating, once we did, the game played a lot better. I know that this may seem like a common sense thing, but we had a lot of people just playing it deathmatch style, and we soon found ourselves on the losing end. Also, the level design on the maps can be a bit labyrinthine in structure. The necromorphs can see through walls, and there’s this red filter on the screen, making the shadows much darker, and hard to see if you’re actually moving closer to the other team, or just running into a corner.

Instead of a multiplayer component for the next game, Visceral/EA should focus on co-op campaign, that’s the biggest takeaway from the multiplayer. When you work together, guarding flanks, providing cover fire while you finish objectives, the game is intense and satisfying. It mirrors the intensity and pace of the single player campaign, which is why you bought the game to begin with. You could add twists to the mechanics, provide more complex boss battles. Split the team up from time to time, you get the idea. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the multiplayer, there’s just not enough to it to justify why the focus was put in to that and not a co-op campaign which would make more sense from both story and game play perspectives. If the games genetic siblings Resident Evil 5 and the Gears of War series can provide that, why not try to add that Dead Space formula to a co-op campaign as well.

Paying sixty dollars for a fierce rental is a sticking point. The idea that a nine hour campaign is justifiable with the addition of a multiplayer component doesn’t work with all games. Seeing as the first Dead Space was a single player only kind of experience, that is the main draw for the sequel. The multiplayer is a nice cherry on top, but it is merely a dalliance, and then to be forgotten. On top of the multimedia campaign that comes with the Dead Space franchise, the comic books, novels, tie-in games/anime, the whole fandom of the series begins to take its toll financially, and it’s hard to justify a purchase that fills in a scant few holes.

Verdict: Fierce Rental.
--Or helpful trade in value after you exhaust the shallow multiplayer (if you’re a fan of the series and purchase it).