My “Expert” Opinion on the Candidates, Preface

Edited May 27, 2012: More than a month has passed since I posted this and I no longer have any real interest in following up on this. I might do it at some point, but don’t expect me to do it.

Over the last what has seemed like a lifetime those of us who enjoy being miserable and, as such, tend to follow the political world have been overwhelmed with images of a rapidly dwindling assortment of white guys, women who are not-witches, and creepy rich old black guys. Now we are down to 4. The two token minorities and women are out and we are left with 4 white guys who constantly seem to be rubbing entire demographics the wrong way and none of wphom seem particularly electable in the general election. As I have nought else to do and am bored out of my gourd I thought I would share my thoughts.

As the political world is rife with scandalous accusations minus even the slightest basis in such trivial matters as “reality,” “logic” and —at times— “basic sanity,” let me set aside basic ground rules I will attempt to follow as I progress: I will cite everything; I will not try to predict what their Presidency will look like as I am not a fucking magician; I will make at least the some effort to take these men seriously both as candidates and as people.

In my next post I will begin on my boredom induced stroll through the deeply underwhelming world of the Republican candidates taking an honest look at each in turn, after which I might take a detour and look at a few 3rd party candidates, and then I will wrap up with a look at our current President and take a moderately serious and somewhat in-depth look at his reelection bid and his electability.

A Chink Lin His Armor

Edit May 10, 2012: I would like to make clear I have at least partially changed my views on this issue since posting this and have come to regret posting it in the first place. I could delete it, but will not due to my belief in not censoring history, personal or otherwise. In fact, I regret the entire night that lead to it. I, despite damned well knowing better, got caught up in a flame war on the issue and as always when I let that happen refused to back off and ended up making a royal ass of myself. I felt at the time that the author of the article and the commentator were found guilty by mob rule without trial. I still think there is truth to this, but that does not change that I acted like an ass.

I also do now believe that the author of the article probably deserved the termination. Although, I do still feel bad for the guy. This whole debacle is probably going to be hanging over his head for the rest of his life and I am not sure he deserves that, but still: He should have known better when he published the article.

I do not know how many of my readers have been following the story regarding recent allegations of racism amongst two sports reporters for using variations on the phrase “A Chink in his Armor” while reporting on breakaway NBA star, Harvard graduate, and all around awesome person Jeremy Lin. Futhermore I am not aware if I actually have any readers, but I digress.

The truth is I know very little about the details of this case and I do not care, because the details are irrelevant to what I have to say about it. What bugs me is not whether or not this was racist, what bugs me is that there are people out there who simply assume it was racist. If we are truly heading in a path where writers must constantly self censor themselves when writing about minorities on the off chance they use a phrase that could be construed to be racist then that is just a damned shame. It is not the end of the world, it is not the end of journalism, but it is a damned shame.

That will be all. You can now go about your regularly schedule evening already in progress.

Some Thoughts About “Bethesda v Interplay”

The following was originally posted to Interplay’s official forum. It was deleted for reasons that I do not feel like going into. Here it is:

The real greed comes from current Interplay CEO Hervé Caen. I think we all know Interplay would not have had a chance in hell of getting Fallout: Online off the ground without Fallout 3 paving the way and then they would not have had a chance in hell of financing it without the $5,750,000 Bethesda paid for the rights to the Fallout franchise, and now that Intertplay has that money they are trying to twist the law in order to get the rights back. It is wrong and it frankly disgusts me. Don’t get me wrong, I love old school Fallout and I want to play Fallout: Online, but it is clear to me that Hervé Caen is just not an honest person, and just as importantly to me it is clear to me he is not a gamer. What ever happened to “By Gamers For Gamers”? Well, the Titus buyout happened, a company best known for making crappy licensed games like Blues Brothers 2000 for the N64.

It really irks me when old school Fallout fans rush to defend Interplay while condemning Bethesda. Bethesda are clearly fans of the series, more than we can say about Hervé Caen. Let us not forget this is the man who postponed Van Buren (Interplay’s attempt at Fallout 3) to make Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, then cancelled Van Buren outright to begin production on Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 a game which, thank god, never saw the light of day. No fan of Fallout would have done that.

As for the lawsuit, there is fault on both sides, a tad more on Interplay’s, but only a tad. I do of course hope Fallout: Online gets made, but I also very much hope than Bethesda keeps the rights to Fallout. They are the ones who actually started making good Fallout games again for the first time in about a decade (FO:T is only so-so) and more importantly they bought the series fair and square. Trying to go back on what was a perfectly fair deal, as I have said, truly and thoroughly disgusts me. If Interplay wins the rights back in court it will just confirm to me that there is no God.

It does seem to me a lot has to be done for my dream world where Fallout: Online gets released while Bethesda still maintains the rights. I do not know if Fallout: Online is as damaging to Bethesda’s canon as Bethesda claims as that part of the legal documentation has been redacted from public record. I would like to hope it’s not. I want to think that the people developing FO:O have more respect than to mess with Bethesda’s canon, whether it was through incompetence or malice, either way Bethesda deserves more respect than that. Not knowing the details of the complaints I really can not comment more than that.

Update: The case was settled out of court and Interplay gave up the rights to Fallout: Online for $3 million.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here?

The question from which this article takes its name was posed by decorated Navy Vice Admiral and one time Vice Presidential candidate — running alongside Ross Perot — James Bond Stockdale. A name that is wholly coincidental in its badassery as Stockdale’s birth predated the creation of James Bond by more than 3 decades. All of this nonsense is completely moot in regards to the point I am actually trying to make, the point that if you are reading this you likely do not know who I am, and even if you do you likely do not know why you should care at all what I have to say.In short, I am Jacob P Secrest. The P stands for whatever I feel like making it stand for in the moment, whether it be Phineas, Pablo, or Danger. I am a human male of approximately 22 and one third years of age. I often half-jokingly state that my religion is Capitalism, although in truth I am an atheist, mind that I am not an anti-theist. An anti-theist is someone who actively opposes religion. Personally, I couldn’t care less what you believe, so long as you afford me the same luxury. Beyond that, I hate a lot of things; amongst those things are The Cleveland Show, Bosch Faustin, and most everything else that exists. I also love a lot of things, such as video games, good science fiction, and obscure history. My bizarre assortment of fascination, both those of love and of hate, shall likely allow me for a great deal of blog posts in the future.

Now I guess the question still remains: Why am I here? Or even more to the point: Why should you care? I suppose I cannot make you care about what I have to say, but I intend to keep typing anyways, because as I have mentioned I have a great many views on a great many topics and it would be unbecoming of me to hold them in any longer. I am here, typing on my netbook and then subsequently posting this article to the Internet, because I believe with every fibre of my being that I have things worthwhile to say, or at the very least I have things that I desire to say. Maybe that explanation of why I am here is not good enough for you, if that is the case then you can just blow me.

So with the title addressed I guess all I have left to do is briefly state what I intend to do with my newly minted weblog. I intend to comment on anything and everything that may interest me, and there are a lot of things that do interest me. I also, well aware of the average American’s desire for brevity in their reading material intend to not make a blog post which goes above 500 words in length. For reference, this article is 493 words in length.