Bad Writing

Today at work I put self-adhesive stamps on like 943 envelopes. In between stampings I considered possible solutions to the illegal immigration conundrum that threatens our country. In the wake of recently failed legislature, I feel as if these solutions may prove viable and valuable to our nation.

SOLUTION 1: Create a government agency tasked with hunting down all illegal immigrants in major metropolitan cities. Illegal immigration will be punishable by death, a sentence to be administered with discretion by members of the aforementioned government agency. They will call this 'retirement,' to be more politically correct for the morning shows. Immigrants had been utilized as cheap labor in the past, but certain stronger immigrants somehow became self-aware and therefore untrustworthy.

SOLUTION 2: Convert Manhattan into an inescapable penitentiary for illegal immigrants. Fifty-foot walls will be built on the shores opposite New York City, to be patrolled by a helmeted police force dressed otherwise like Gerard Way. The illegal immigrants will be abandoned on Manhattan Island without support and all exits will be barred or mined. Anyone caught escaping by sea will be immediately executed by rocket barrage. Ernest Borgnine will also be sent to the island.

SOLUTION 3: Insert all illegal immigrants into a computer simulation of the United States of America. Allow them to work low-paying jobs with little security, sending money home every month to virtual families in Mexico or wherever. As each illegal immigrant floats unconscious in a gooey pod, harvest illegal body heat to power oil refineries and Taco Bells. Create a government agency to hunt down and kill rogue superpowered illegal immigrants. Maybe Google can run the simulation?

I hope these recommendations will prove fruitful.

The director of the next entry in the Bond series is none other than the architect of stupid Peter Pan sob vehicle Finding Neverland. Marc Forster, who also directed the dull Stranger Than Fiction and perversely arousing Monster's Balls Ball, is taking over the helm from contemporary Bond veteran Martin Campbell.

Forster is a good director who routinely shows visual prowess in his film. Stranger Than Fiction was almost watchable thanks to its prettiness. But, honestly, all of his films are boring to me. He lacks the kinetic style and wry sense of humor that is integral to a successful Bond flick. At least we will probably get a good sex scene.

Campbell is the only director to get Bond marginally right since the '80s, and I am sad to see him go. He is set to direct some absurd action flick about a runaway train, in an obvious attempt to reclaim the runaway train market from Steven Seagal. Unstoppable has my full endorsement regardless.

NB: At the end of Finding Neverland, everyone else in the theater was crying. I was laughing. At them.

Kindergarten_cop

I don't think there is anything else I can say tonight. God bless America and premium cable. I am just wondering how such a dedicated educator finds the time to pump iron.

And why not? Daily updates are forthcoming, when I feel less laconic. But, for today, enjoy this fuzzy sign of the apocalypse.

I saw Allen Coulter's "Hollywoodland" last night and couldn't bring myself to like the innocuous suicide caper; it is a mediocre ode to Hollywood mediocrity. The film felt so worthless that I didn't plan on gracing my rarely updated blog with any bitter denunciation whatsoever. But then I read Manohla Dargis' review of the film for The New York Times. Or, rather, her lengthy noncommittal plot synopsis of the film. Her piece reminds me of a student assignment prepared for English class after merely reading the corresponding Cliff Notes.

A mediocre review of a mediocre film. The mind reels.

What books are on your nightstand?

Work and Other Sins : Life in New York City and Thereabouts

Charles LeDuff

★★★★★

The Guermantes Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 3 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Penguin Clas

Marcel Proust

What's the nerdiest thing about you?

My priceless collection of Pokemon cards

What was (or is) your favorite subject in school?

English, because I could usually sit there and covertly read my own books

I have been playing Electronic Arts’ interpretation of The Godfather, a game that attempts to replicate the epic countenance of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film trilogy. It fails, spectacularly. While the gameplay mechanics are well-designed and the narrative creatively re-imagined, EA’s title ignores the most defining theme of both Mario Puzo’s novel and Coppola’s films: choice, and how it affects people and the environment around them.

You play as a rising enforcer for the Corleone family, shooting and bludgeoning your way through 1940s New York. You can run down pedestrians without the slightest reproach and kill your enemies in a variety of ways that include kneecappings, incineration, and straight-up gangland execution. Upon his targeting, every character in the game is represented as having a name; even if a thug is nothing more than cannon fodder, he has an identity.

Despite this, the game rewards a player for brutal murder instead of normal, moral behavior. Even if a boss begs you for his life and invokes his children, you gain nothing by letting him live. If you are gunned down in the middle of a crime, you just respawn at the nearest clinic in under five seconds.

The game is meant to be played without a moral compass. This mechanic is distant from the underlying moral subtext of the Godfather canon; Michael learned that sacrificing your soul to gain power is ultimately damning, but you pay no in-game toll for wanton killing and amoral behavior. Causality becomes irrelevant since you barely suffer or profit from the most brazen reprehensible activities.

Characters die at a steady pace but the rapidity of the game disallows you from forming any connection with them. Even when a love interest is murdered in front of you, there is no grief or solemnity. Her death just represents another opportunity, by slaughtering her kidnappers, to gain experience by earning more Vendetta points. The Godfather is shot, and you retaliate. Luca Brasi is assassinated, and you retaliate. But why? You fight solely because it is your duty to the family. Little of your personal motivation factors in.

You have no idea what your character’s hopes, dreams, and desires are. You can’t even postulate, since the game offers no sort of inner monologue or exposition. No choice is offered, either; you can’t abstain from a life of crime and join the police, or even work for a rival family. The rich Godfather heritage is merely an excuse for you to kill things, not an opportunity to enter an intriguing world and affect it in a manner of your own choosing. By ignoring the true benefit of the videogame as a medium, EA has hamstringed its own prestige project.

NB: This was meant to be a post that addressed how pervasive violence in games limits the player's moral culpability for his actions. But it evolved during my writing, and become a separate critique. Odd. I hope to somehow become less confused and write about both moral and causal desensitization at another time.

Alcohol education has now been perfected!

RIOTS ARE BAD