Fireteams, Squads & Clans

Gaming, , ,

It is unusual that a person at my age would one day order a console, and, some how, in a few short months, become a “gamer.” To be perfectly frank, I should have gotten the Roku like I planned.  I’d still be reading a lot more, and I might be more social in the real world, but that’s not what happened.  I had been one of those people who was untethered (or whatever it is that they call those of us who stream everything), and I was purchasing my first television because I was a little tired of watching everything on a laptop or tablet.  A friend recommended I get a gaming console.  His logic was that it would allow me to do everything a Roku or other streaming device would with the added bonus of being able to play games like GTA (if you’ve never banged a hooker and then beat her to get your money back, you have not lived).  It was a sound argument for, and I acquiesced.

Fast forward: Xbox One. Check. Ridiculously large flat screen TV. Check. Battlefield 4 and Assassins Creed: Black Flag. Check.  The last time I owned my own gaming console Sega Saturn was still a thing. It is not to say that I didn’t have a cursory knowledge of gaming.  My friends had all of the next gen consoles, but I never saw the point in devoting my time or money into  getting one of my own. I thought it was not something that I could see myself doing on a regular basis, devoting myself to achievements in a game.  The games I picked when I got my Xbox were ones I figured I would play casually, and that it would just be something to do when I was bored.  Battlefield 4 was chosen because I had friends who played, and moving halfway across the country would allow me to interact with them. It had the added allure of violence after a day of dealing with people.  Assassins Creed was chosen because it’s just a fun game.  So how did I find myself playing games every day with people I don’t really know?  How did I reach a point where I traveled 2.5 hours for a Halloween party hosted by a virtual stranger?

There is an interesting aspect to gaming that I did not know existed, which is a sense of community.  Many games are designed with the intent to bring people together, especially the types of people who are not necessarily social IRL (in real life).  I came into gaming with ambassadors to some extent.  I had friends who played, and wanted to play with me, but each of those friends is a “lone wolf” type.  They only play with other people they know IRL, and have for years.  A chance introduction of a friend of a friend put me down a rabbit’s hole.  “Yeah, you should hit him up on Xbox. He’s good at teaching people how to play Battlefield.” I should tell you, now, I’m not even a mediocre player at this time, but I was far worse when the statement was made.  One thing led to another, and it turned out he was a part of a clan affiliated with the Good Game Network (GGN).  His introductions led to other introductions which led to more, and the beautiful thing about it all was that no one judged my lack of skills.  I was quite up front about it, but (even the most asinine) questions I posed were answered with sincerity, and most genuinely wanted to help, and make gaming enjoyable.

I should back track just a bit.  The reason I enjoy gaming is because of Halo and the social interaction through GGN players based in this game.  While I and the friend of a friend were playing Battlefield and he made a pitch for Master Chief Collection which was convincing enough that I bought the bundle right away.  There were caveats about the decline of clans, and so forth, but that it had great maps, and Halo 3 was the heyday of Halo, etc. He served as my ambassador, and I started following players who surprisingly followed me back, and they introduced me to other players, and, in strange twist of fate, a player took a liking to me, and decided she would “drag me through maps” to get a better understanding of the game. “You want a skull?” I didn’t know what she meant or why it was something to get, but I went along.  “Look where I’m shooting.” My Spartan spins around, trying to figure out which way is up — a  lot of phrases running through my head that would make a drunk sailor blush. In real time, the introduction and welcoming took about two weeks.

Earlier, I said that a lot of games are designed to be social.  The most intriguing part of starting to game is how there becomes a social order — that even with the disconnect of individuals in their separate spaces distanced by countless miles, people find a way to find others like themselves, and create societies within that paradigm.  “I like to do this thing, and you like to do this thing.  Let’s do this thing together.” It appears from the Cliff’s Notes versions of the histories of a few clans I’ve interacted with that each clan started as a whim, and grew from there, and many of the members have known each other for years.  When gaming moved from (in my day) people needing to be in the same location in order to play with one another to an online world where you have to work with strangers (randoms) in order to reach an objective, it ultimately requires you to interact and forge alliances if you want to get the most out of the game.  Even mission based games provide a cooperative function so that you are not isolated in the gaming experience.

I was in a party on Xbox Live, and a group in the party were in the middle of a raid (Destiny, not Halo).  The amount of planning that went into the raid: the roles that each member would take, when to distract the big boss, who could serve as a spawn point; it was like being an audience to a ballet.  The design of the game requires coordination, and a recognition that just running into a room with a bunch of grenades and your AR/BR load out isn’t enough to obtain your objective(unless you prefer free for all slayer game modes, and kudos to you).  The gentleman in the raid beat it, and there was a tangible sense of accomplishment, which led to a deepening of their connection with one another.  They were on the same team and their victory was compounded by the group dynamic of the accomplishment because there is something about being able to share in the success (there are a couple of interesting TED Talks about the psychology of gaming).

In addition to the established clans which provide a safety net of team play in gaming, game designers build into parts of games a matchmaking for certain missions.  “It is dangerous to go alone.”  They provide you with a fire team.  People without prior introduction have offered assistance because of this feature.  We did a mission together, then there was an invite to continue on.  I spent a number I’m not comfortable sharing of hours with two guys, leveling up my warlock.  In this instance, it was the altruism of another gamer who had gone through the process of leveling up alone, and did not want to see another “suffer” as he did.  “It’s no fun leveling up alone.” Truer words, and whatnot.

Before I got my Xbox, the old hands I knew warned me about the terrible and horrific things people spew at one another.  They would recount statements made by children in lobby chat as a forewarning that gaming was not for the thin skinned.  They made it sound as though I would be a Christian entering into a den of lions.  What I encountered was the polar opposite.  Maybe I am extremely lucky.  Maybe my gamer tag doesn’t encourage ridicule.  Maybe my honesty in the beginning of each new encounter of my lack of skill incites pity and mercy among the more experienced.  I honestly don’t know.

I have been gaming for the last six months, and I’ve learned a lot in a short period of time.  The biggest take away from all of it, though, is that people are kind.  Regardless of the circumstance, people find ways to connect with one another.  I’m not going to say that I have not played with those with less than admirable character, or that playing online will be a let’s hold hands and sing Kumbaya experience.  Every person you interact with is still a person with flaws, and issues, and the mere condition of being human.  What I am saying is that when there is a design for communal victories, a sense of community spawns in an interesting way.

I don’t think that I have the ability to adequately explain all of the intricacies of why gaming has registered so much with me, especially this late in my life, but I will leave you with one last anecdote.  There was a group of us playing big team battle in Halo.  We (and by “we” I mean the rest of the team) were killing the other team to the point that all but one of the opposing team quit the game.  It was a slayer mode which meant that every time that one player spawned we would kill him.  Everyone on our team stated that they would have quit if we were in his position as we waited for him to be spawned. This individual did not quit with the full knowledge that once he spawned he would be immediately murdered.  When the game finally ended, a member of our team requested we invite this lone player to join us.  He joined us for a few games.  Think about that, though — a person who refuses to quit because he enjoys the game is then invited to join a team of strangers because of their respect for his tenacity.  It’s akin to warriors on a battlefield recognizing the strength of an enemy and rather than eliminating him, attempt to assimilate him into their army.  For that one random, nothing came from it other than the few games he got to share playing with a team.  He didn’t become a member of either of the clans represented, but he had fun in a new experience, and received a couple of pointers for his effort.  This only highlights how people are more likely to be inclusive rather than exclusive.

Gaming is still shiny and new to me, and I’m not sure if I will be like others I know who have made it a part of their lives for years.  It keeps me on my toes, and I appreciate the relationships I’m building through the social structure.  Ultimately, it has served as a new forum to be social when I would normally hide away from the world.  I suspect it provides that for many people.

Home Going

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Auntie and I walked down the aisle hand in hand, following the ritual of the family processional for Reginald’s home going.  As we neared the front of the aisle, I turned to take a seat next to my grandmother, but my Auntie pulled my hand and redirected me to the open casket to look at his remains.  Auntie’s face was calm, assessing how well the body is preserved.  She nodded slightly, raised her eyebrows, and pursed her lips as to confirm that the funeral home did a good job; she approved.  I, on the other hand, gingerly peeked over.  My eyes immediately shut and my head turned away.  That thing in the coffin is not Reginald.  It looked like Reginald, but his skin was pallid and powdered.  From what I could tell, it easily could have been a wax replication of the man I knew rather than his actual body.  I quickly pulled Auntie’s hand and we sat next Grandma as the others following us repeated the ritual of viewing.  After the viewing by all others, it was Grandma’s turn to view her husband’s body, Son standing by her side.  The pain of loss did not rise in me until I saw the grief in Grandma’s face as she was forced to confront that the man she loved for nearly 40 years is gone.  It’s a cruel requirement of the recently deceased to make us look at them when they know their true essence is not there.

There were 13 years between my attendance of a funeral.  The benefit of being relatively young is that you are not forced to confront your mortality or the mortality of others. Barring freak accidents or rare diseases, someone around my age who lives a middle class life in an industrialized country rarely has to concern themselves with the idea that those we entrust into our lives will one day leave us, or that one day we may leave them.  Funerals remind us that this time is temporary.  It is not to say that I haven’t lost people in the last 13 years, but that there is something about attending a ritualized mourning that makes the loss more difficult to burden.

Reginald’s coffin was a beautiful mahogany with a high gloss finish, and copper accents.  The floral arrangements were tactful. Simple banners with the identity of the giver printed in gold leaf were pinned neatly against oranges, reds and whites — gladiolus, torch ginger, anthurium, carnations and Asiatic lilies in circles and fans.

Before the home going, the family circled in a room outside of the chapel, and Pastor apologized for the state of the chapel before beginning her prayer– something about a speaker that wasn’t done right and had nothing to do with the ceremony.  It was a glimpse of her vanity; something that would punctuate the service to come.  She made us bow our heads as she asked the Lord for us to have a — what would one call it? — a blessed remembrance.  It was strange to have to ask for an easy grieving ritual before the actual ritual, like God gave a damn about whether or not we prayed a little longer, and rejoiced in His name a little more even in the face of our personal loss.  I wanted to tell the pastor that God had his point proven with Job;  let’s just hurry up and get this over with so I can be uncomfortable somewhere else, and not uncomfortable where I currently was, which was holding hands with a practical stranger in four inch heels I hadn’t worn in a year and had forgotten were uneven from wear.  My feet hurt;  the pastor’s prayer annoyed me; and the only thing I could think was “please don’t let me fall when I go up to speak.”

Really the only point of the home going is for the people left behind to have a form of closure.  There’s this story about Emily Dickinson used to illustrate her being reclusive where she refused to go to her father’s funeral.  The funeral was being held in parlor of their home on the first floor.  She was on the second floor.  I think she had the right idea.  Who wants to have the last memory of someone they loved be them dead?

The funeral, itself, was not much out of the ordinary.  There was the second apology by the pastor about the speaker, and some quick stories about how she knew Reginald.  There was the obligatory “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” sung by someone who never met the deceased, bible passages by the grandchildren, obituary by a niece, and an organ player who spent most of the service texting with someone.  I was sandwiched between two aunts, and the provider of tissue for all.  Somewhere in the middle of the service, the pastor said that we were being too solemn and that the Holy Spirit was directing her that Reginald would want us to rejoice in the house of the Lord.  She spoke in a cadence that rose and fell like the ebbs of a tide with an oncoming storm.  She demanded we rejoice in the Lord, clap our hands, say “hallelujah” because Reginald loved the Lord.  She repeated the same message of directives for a few minutes with the refrain of “Reginald loved the Lord.”  Part of me wondered how well she knew him.  Part of me wondered if she was equally as uncomfortable with communal mourning.  Mostly, I just thought, “When will this be over?” After a few awkward testimonials, and a final statement by the pastor, who then broke out into song, her rendition of “I Love the Lord,” we were released.

Grandma made her way to the limo.  There was a line to follow, all to give their condolences before the repast.  In case you are wondering what a repast is, it’s that meal you see in all of the movies where everyone mills around a home, making uneasy small talk.  When it’s a black family, it’s called a repast (it comes from the French meaning meal — I had to look it up).  Silly me, I thought that when the funeral was over, we would be able to flee to the restaurant and be out of step there, but, no.   There is a requirement that everyone come to the widow, and tell her how important the deceased was and how they feel for her loss.  Each tribute ended nearly the same way: “If you need anything.” An empty promise stated at the end of each “I’m sorry for your loss.”  Many of the people who spoke to her had never met her before, and would never see her again, but the promise was still made.  I don’t know if it can really be conveyed how odd it must have looked to the passerby that there was a line leading to a limo in South Central Los Angeles.  What rap star or celebrity could it be? No, just Grandma, numb to an onslaught of well wishers, all wanting the chance to say something, anything, desperate to share their bit of nonsense.  Somewhere during this observance, I did fall, on the steps of the church, in front of everyone.  We left shortly after.

The repast was in a bright and airy room that overlooked the marina in a restaurant where you had to walk on a bridge over a Koi pond.  The name of the restaurant was crass in nature, giving homage to its less than regal origins when many many years before the area was filled with a more savory sort of clientele.  Auntie, Grandma, and I sat together again.  We were “ride or die” that day.  The eight or so other tables filled quickly.  No one, not even my father, wanted to sit at our table.  It’s still unclear if the reason people avoided our table was due to some energy we were putting out, or their own uneasiness with sitting with the widow.  Honestly, though, how can you make small talk with a woman who lost her husband of 40 years?  It’s most certainly not the table where you can talk about the new import you’ve had your eye on, or how your niece is getting married in a couple of weeks.  That’s not going to be the fun table.  People would visit — those who did not pay their respects at the church — and, while they would carry on with their sorries and promises, Auntie and I talked about the real estate by the marina, judging the different items from the buffet, recapping the funeral service, every so often glancing over to Grandma to see who was making their emotional offerings.

At some point, a man had situated himself next to Grandma.  He was greasy, and his thin lips curled at the ends.  He was a light skinned man with curly hair that had too much product in it.  He wore gaudy clothing, a gold chain, and he leaned too close when he spoke to her.   In his defense, I later found out that he had been infatuated with Grandma since he was a very young man, but he made me more uneasy than the situation already lended.  I expected that there was a pimp cane, an overcoat, and a hat waiting for him at his seat at a different table.  I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but I wanted him to disappear.  Whisper, whisper, whisper … “I can call you and …” whisper, whisper whisper … “You know you’ve always been a beautiful woman … ” whisper, whisper whisper.  This went on for too long, but, finally, another interloper arrived.  As the repast wound down, Grandma turns to me and says, “Drink as much of that champagne as you can.  We paid for it.”  And, I did.

A couple of days later, with a much smaller gathering, we buried Reginald.  The burial took no more than fifteen minutes, with very little fanfare.  The same tactful arrangements from the service were lined up between graves.  The pall bearers had a time getting the coffin to the grave because they wanted to avoid the tombstones of those already at rest, like the dead actually care if you walk on a piece of stone.  The pastor’s sermon was short –a passage about returning to the ground — punctuated at the end with an offer to counsel Grandma whenever she needed the Lord.  His casket was lowered, and the funeral director came to Grandma to offer her condolences one last time, and to remember their business for the next service.  The witnesses to Reginald’s final resting pulled flowers from the arrangements, morbid souvenirs  of the event.  Grandma, calmly remarked that it was a lovely place, although there was supposed to be a wall.  Then she turned to me and said, “You know you’ll be here one day.”  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I would not be buried, but would be burned.  I walked her to the car where the picked over flowers awaited us, and we left Reginald on a hill overlooking others who were at rest.

There are no words

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This is a TL;DR kind of post – Fair warning.

The failure by the grand jury to indict the officer responsible for the murder of an unarmed man is a travesty in the worst way. Before we get into the racial aspect of this event, before we get into the class aspect, before we begin to untangle the actions of a martial order in order to maintain the status quo, let us acknowledge the simple fact that one person, volitionally, took the life of another – snuffed out any potential that person held because he could not view the other as a human being.

Let us begin by acknowledging that the act of Officer Darren Wilson is an act of state. By him being a police officer, he acts for the authority and the will of the state because his sole job is to uphold law and order. In that, his personal prejudices and his judgment then becomes that of the system which employs him as its agent. Mr. Wilson’s “split second” decision that left six shots in a man with no weapon of his own reflects the general disregard of the state towards its citizens. In many cities across the country officers are taught to treat every person they encounter with suspicion, with the belief that the person with whom s/he is interacting is a potential threat regardless of the interaction. This heightened level of distrust makes it difficult for the officers to assess real threats accurately as everyone, in his/her eyes, is a suspect – a potential wrongdoer or criminal just by existing.

Let us compound that general sense of mistrust, and look at the rates of arrests or stop and frisks that occur in less affluent or impoverished neighborhoods. One will make the argument that in these communities there are higher rates of crimes – more violence, higher rates of thefts, more drug use, etc. Yes, there are higher crime rates in places where people have less money, but, generally, people are not more or less dangerous because the area is impoverished. If we look at the reports of violent crimes over the last few years, St. Louis has ranked in the upper echelon of murders per capita – most of those murders gang and drug related – but that is not to say that one will be shot purely by walking down the street, or that one has to forever look over one’s shoulder because there is a constant threat. Officers, however, who patrol these areas do that. They add to their general mistrust a layer of judgment for those who live in less affluent neighborhoods. Stop and frisks are more likely because of some assumption that the person, merely by his/her living within a particular area, is “up to no good.” The officer has a much freer range to harass and accuse because, generally, the individual doesn’t know his rights.

Let us, now, add on to those two aspects the issue of race. The simplest version of this is that by being part of an “other” class, officers, who are usually not of that same grouping, view that person as a greater threat. By Michael Brown being black, and not just black, but a big strapping chocolate John Henry kind of black man, he’s the biggest threat without being armed. He’s Bigger Thomas, a product of and reinforcement of a general fear created by a society that uses that fear to continue to keep the “other” in its place. There are hundreds (probably thousands) of scholarly papers written on how we create prejudices, how we internalize them, and how black men and women are most commonly viewed as “lesser than” or criminal or overly sexed ad nauseam. What was illustrated with this instance, with this young man, is that he was immediately called a criminal. That the rest of the world assumed that he must have done something because the belief is that we have reached a point in society where we are colorblind because we have a black president, and we are afraid to admit that having one black friend does not mean we’re not racist. The one black friend that people have “is not like other black people,” and the “other black people” don’t have the potential to be President Obama. That is what happens in cases like this. Michael Brown was a threat and easily murdered because, to Officer Wilson, he didn’t have the potential to be anything greater than the circumstances of that moment. What the officer saw, and what most people would see, purely based on pigmentation, was, at best, a future employee at a retail shop, and, at worst, everything that the media portrayed him to be – a brutish man who just robbed a liquor store. The truth is he did not rob anyone. The truth is his reputation was peaceful. The truth is that he died because we as a society have great difficulty unpacking all of our historical baggage and confronting the fact that a state actor didn’t see the potential of an individual, and only saw something that needed to be snuffed out. I am sure that Officer Wilson will tell you that he isn’t racist, but I bet he’ll tell you some stories about “those people.”

For those who have/are burning and pillaging, although I do not condone your actions, I understand. I understand the rage and the disappointment and the longing. The rage that even in the face of unquestioning evidence on a national stage a blind eye is turned to the victimizing of a group. The disappointment and disillusionment because in this exhibition you are still not recognized as full citizens because somehow being a part of this group, this otherness, this unique identity that is entrenched in a long storied narrative of abuse and subjugation, you are confronted with only obstacles to existing on an even playing field. The longing for the day when the promises this nation made to you are fulfilled: a simple acceptance as a part of the collective and not a threat to it. And, in that rage, and longing, and suffering, there has to be a point of release or you implode, and that release is a violent explosion but that moment of incendiary expression will last for just that moment. It’s just enough so that we, as a society, do not self destruct. Just enough rage is released so that we do not take to the streets. Just enough escapes to impede revolution. To those who admonish these violent actors, how can one expect someone who had an act of violence committed against him/her, who followed the system and was not delivered justice, to act better than the person who harmed him/her? Why must the community that bears the burden of injustice be held to a higher standard of law and order than those who are empowered to enforce those laws?

What is most mournful about this situation is not the narrative that it tells of the continuing systemic and systematic oppression of a particular class of people, or that this will not end. What is most depressing in this situation is that we will forget. One day, in the near future, after countless BuzzFeed articles about celebrity activities, and CNN/FoxNews reports about infighting in Congress, and some other scare about Ebola and foreign wars and immigration is that we won’t remember Michael Brown. He will be relegated to the same position of Rodney King, Amadou Diallo, or Oscar Grant – a sometimes remembered rallying cry for the next time something like this happens. And, when it does happen, when the next young unarmed black male is shot and killed and someone brings it to the forefront of the media’s attention on a slow news cycle day or when we decide we need a distraction, we will act shocked and appalled at the travesty of “police brutality” and then we will judge the victim as a criminal and we will let the officer go and we will forget that person’s name too. That’s the real tragedy in all of this – that this isn’t new; it’s a continuing series of the same acts of oppression that we choose, as a society, to ignore or forget.

The God In I

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[This is an old piece of writing from many moons ago. I rediscover it every few years and I keep thinking I should share it, so here you go.]

“‘Behold,’ said the Lord. ‘Thou art of Mine and being of Mine, thou art blessed, for all things that I am in are blessed. You are a division of I, gifted in all that I am. Remember I in a that you do and in every meeting of I you make, for I am everything.'”

A little girl reads and re-reads the text inscribed on a stone beneath the glass case. After a few minutes of contemplation, she pulls on her mother’s sleeve, and once she has the mother’s attention asks: “Mommy, does this mean that I am God?” Her mother quickly silences her with a look of admonishment. “Don’t speak blasphemy!”

The young girl turns back to the glass case, and reads the inscription aloud to herself. She turns to her mother and asks, “Mommy, what does it mean?”

“It means, well … hmn … Oh! It means that you should always remember that the Lord made you.” The mother had no idea what the script meant. More importantly, the mother had no idea that the little girl had been correct.

The little girl looks back to the case, and to the worn letters of the text. She read it over and over again until she memorized it. A chime rings, signalling the closing of the museum. The mother takes the little girl’s hand, and they leave.  The little girl takes one last look at the glass case and reads the sign describing the text: “An Excerpt from THE LOST BOOK.”

In a different plane of existence, God spoke. “Speak your name and you invoke the name of I. Speak of I and you speak Life. In every breath is I, and in every stillness. You are I.”  God did not speak it to the world, only to a little girl.

So Much Blood

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Last night was the first time I gave mixed Martial arts a real chance. When it was becoming popular a number of years ago, I likened it to a soft core gay snuff porn. Men were writhing against each other on the ground, randomly punching the other in the face or on the side of the head while in a desperate embrace. It made me a bit uncomfortable to watch, like I was intruding on a lovers’ quarrel.
I had been raised with the standard “masculine” combat sports of boxing and wrestling (read: WWF, now WWE) where the fighters mostly stood at a distance from each other and physical contact was limited. Boxing is designed as a pretty clean sport itself, especially considering its origins. As an audience, we seek a bout where two men enter the ring with well padded gloves and high boots, prancing around one another looking to connect in short, quick succession with only his fist. We balk when the boxers lock arms, accusing one or both of being cowards. There are unwritten rules of pomp and decorum attached to the sport. Even in wrestling with greater amounts of physical contact, the types of holds are sanitary. It is about putting someone in a particular hold or performing a signature body slam. I am aware that American wrestling is scripted, but there is still a level of athleticism required and a high probability of real injury which allows for comparison.
Mixed martial arts is a beast entirely unto itself. After last night’s UFC bouts which culminated in the title match between Junior Dos Santos versus Cain Velasquez, I have a new understanding and true appreciation for a form of combat I initially snubbed. I sat on the edge of my seat for 3 hours in a Buffalo Wild Wings, half cringing as the blood begins to pour from a gladiator’s face while I stuff mine with another boneless chicken wing. MMA is the closest thing we have in modern times to the gladiator arenas of Roman times. It’s bloody and brutal, but you can’t look away.
The blood is what got to me. I’m not a squeamish person by any means. I continued to consume meat and fried potatoes throughout the fights, but I kept thinking “Ugh, look at all that blood.” There’s an amount of blood in boxing and wrestling, but it’s sanitized in a way. In boxing, it may be pouring from a fighter’s face, but they call fights if there’s too much. In wrestling, a wrestler may make a small cut prior to the fight so that he will bleed when he’s hit with a chair or a “head butt.” It’s controlled gore. In MMA, it’s something else entirely. White shorts turn pink as the two combatants roll around and writhe in one another’s blood with little to no concern that they are bleeding. Their faces are coated in a bright crimson as they continue to try to out maneuver and out punch the other, and they keep going until they are both a vampire’s wet dream.
The Dos Santos/Vasquez fight was particularly gruesome, Dos Santos’s failure to keep his hands up being a major factor. His face was a bulbous mess akin to a crimson colored elephant man. The victor looked mildly less afflicted with a gash across the bridge of his nose and a half-open right eye. Both fighters spent most of the five rounds tightly embraced, and covered in each other’s fluids. The striking thing about this fight, and MMA fights in general, is the lack of fear of being hit, of pain, of sacrificing one’s body for momentary victory. There is always the question as to why we are drawn to violent sports. I am certain there are literally thousands of papers dealing with our socio-psychological attraction to blood sports.
What initially turned me away from MMA is now what draws me to the sport. I see how there is a mastery of the brawl itself. It’s an illustration of humanity at one of its basest forms (which I say with utmost respect). MMA is not designed to be pretty or an art form, but more so designed for us to engage in pure confrontation. We gather in public places, and cringe and cheer in unison at the battle before us, respectful of the combatants and what they put themselves through for our entertainment. It takes a unique type of person to fight in such a manner, someone who is constantly taking on a different type of challenger and style of fighting in a way you don’t see with other forms of sports. The rules are limited, and each man is there to fight until the fight is over with little interference from anyone else unless there is absolute certainty a fighter cannot continue. It is an honest sport, and I think we’ve lost a lot of honesty in other sports. MMA doesn’t pretend to be anything more than what it is – two people in a ring and time where someone leaves a winner. I may be hooked

This thing is tripping

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Write about the most precious thing you’ve ever lost.

I asked for inspiration for what my first blog post should be and this sucker gave a prompt of the most precious thing I’ve lost.  I don’t think that is really how I want to introduce myself to the world wide web.  It seems a bit too personal, seeing that we’ve just met and all.  I do have a friend/acquaintance who believes in constantly interacting “on a human level.”  He’s the existential type border lining a nihilist philosophy.  He would freely tell you about anything in a blunt, and unapologetic way.  Lucky for you, (mostly because I believe in privacy and decorum) I will not be sharing with such abandon.

I’m not sure what you should expect from this blog.  I haven’t given it too much thought.  This is going to be an exercise in how honest and forthcoming I can be to an anonymous audience.  It may sometimes be funny, sometimes sad, and anything in between.  I feel that this will be a space for a lot of random content only to support my vanity.  Of course, it may also fall by the wayside as my laziness takes control.  I’d like to say that I will be diligent in my posting, but I cannot make that promise.  What I will say is I will try.  Yoda would be absolutely livid with that statement, but he’s dead (spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the original trilogy).

Word Press ate my first blog post

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I had this relatively honest, and sincere introduction of myself … I went to preview it, and wordpress ate it.  I’m a little sad about that, especially since it claims to auto save the draft.  It’s a liar to me.  With that said, I can’t recreate what I wrote before and I will just say a friendly hello to you anonymous people out there in the world wide web (yes, I’m definitely dating myself – don’t make me reminisce about alta vista or prodigy or dial up).  

What you will find in the coming posts:

  • Happy things
  • Sad things
  • Angry things
  • Food things 
  • Any things

I look forward to providing more useless content to the world.