KHdN – Kenneth Hynek (dot Net)

…”it” being this post by Vox, which dates back a few months. As I was not really a Call of Duty player (nor even any particular kind of gamer in any meaningful sense) back in November of 2009, I couldn’t really relate. But in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been sucked into Mass Effect in a way that I have not been sucked into a game for at least fifteen years (which was about when I first played through Marathon).

And suddenly, this makes sense to me:

I have to admit, I’ve never understood how women, who apparently spend considerably more time in front of the television on average than men, can possibly complain about the male preference for electronic games. Let’s face it, you had better be one scintillating conversationalist and/or contortionist if you seriously expect to compete with CoD [or Mass Effect - ed.]. Now, I do occasionally fear for the fate of the human race when talking to younger gamers who genuinely don’t seem to understand that real flesh-and-blood women could at least occasionally be preferable to porn and PS/3; at least back in the Golden Age, game geeks realized that they were compensating for missing out on something.

Though to be fair, I should probably also cite part of the article to which Vox was responding:

Something momentous took place in The World of Men this week, something that those living in The World of Women — that is, largely, The Real World [HAR! - ed.] –- may yet be unaware of. At midnight on Monday, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 went on sale. Should you be a reader of the female persuasion your reaction is likely to be mystification followed by the dawning realisation that this accounts for your partner’s having since gone AWOL….

Do read some of the comments on both articles; there’s plenty of amusement to be found therein, though I have to admit the most interesting is probably this one (from Vox’s), which hits another nail squarely on the head:

If it is an “issue” it is a feminine thing, women have issues, they are to be discussed (at very great length mostly) and there are indeed (in thier reality) many issues.

Men don’t have issues, they have problems. Problems are to be solved not endlessly discussed.

I will now attempt, per my usual style, to tie these two disparate statements together.

Let me begin by saying this: it would seem to me to be the case that “time” in the home can be divided up into three main categories: quality time, chores/maintenance time, and unwinding/non-productive time.

Quality time is “couple time” spent together, and can involve almost anything (dates, board games, sex, watching television together, going for a walk together, etc.) so long as both parties in the couple derive something meaningful from it, and so long as the activity performed in some way brings them closer together (in what we Catholics would call a “unitive” sense). In a childless environment, attending church can generally be considered to fall into this category. Chores/maintenance time is pretty self-explanatory: this is the vacuuming, the sweeping, the dishes, the dusting, and whatever else needs be done on a regular basis to keep the house/apartment/condo livable. Unwinding/non-productive time falls outside these other categories, and can also involve almost anything. Gaming, watching television (alone), or going for a walk (alone) fall into these categories.

(Where children are present, a fourth category needs to be added as well: family time. Family time should also be self-explanatory: this is playing with the kid(s), feeding the kid(s), reading bed-time stories, and putting the kid(s) to bed. Since the environment described is not childless, going to church falls into this category as well.)

In general, a healthy balance needs to be struck between these various time allotments. It should also be noted, where children are present, that family time necessarily means a shortening of quality time and/or unwinding/non-productive time; chores and maintenance are pretty much constants in any environment.

Not that it’s that simple. Quality time is chiefly dependent, I assert, on both spouses deriving meaning from the chosen activity.

Watching TV is a good example, from my own life, of an activity that outwardly appears to be quality time, and might even be perceived as quality time by my wife…but which rarely presents itself as quality time for me as well. Though I may get sucked into the narrative or action of a particular episode of a particular television show (CSI, Criminal Minds, etc.), or though I may crack a grin at something Ray Romano says in his eponymous television show (thankfully now out of production, but unfortunately still in syndication)…I’m not actually deriving meaning from the time spent doing so. Indeed, the last time television show I felt made for meaningful watching, pretty much without fail, was…er…Battlestar Galactica.

Moving back to general discussion, let me contend for a moment that quality time which is meaningful to only one spouse (not both) is really just unwinding/non-productive time in disguise. Would I be going out on a limb to assume that many men find themselves in just such a plight (that is: going along with whatever activity their sweetheart wants to do, because it’s meaningful to her that the activity be done together, whilst deriving next to nothing from the activity proper for themselves)?

So why is male gaming such a bad thing? In general, there are two avenues men can follow when they don’t wish to get caught up in something at home which is, in their view, more or less meaningless and uninteresting: they can either go and do something somewhere else in the home which is interesting to them, or they can go and do something outside the home which is interesting to them. (For various reasons, the former is preferable, to both men of integrity and women of every stripe.)

Now, there is still a problem to be remedied here: quality time is still important, and shouldn’t (in general) be sacrificed if all it provides is more unwinding/non-productive time for both spouses. But of course, the question needs to be asked: why isn’t quality time working? A lot of men would probably note, wryly, that the women in their lives would attempt to put the responsibility for the breakdown of quality time on the men, rather than on themselves. And in some cases, that’s probably true.

But equally, it’s probably also quite true (and then in quite a lot more cases) that men and women have rather widely varying ideas as to what constitutes quality time, and that men (especially) run into no small amount of stonewalling and other frustrations where areas of overlap do in fact exist. Vox hits the nail on the head, if in a somewhat crude manner: unless the conversation is somehow more engaging than a truly well-crafted RPG or shooter, or unless the sex is sufficiently vigorous/involved, most activities that take place “in the home,” from a man’s perspective, fall into categories two, three or four: chores, unwinding, or family. Quality time is, or should be, about escaping from (or, at minimum, setting aside) the banalities of everyday life and the ordinary routines and habits of the spouses. Time spent at home is…well…for those other things. Unless the conversation (or the sex) is just. That. Good.

Now, it’s probably not stretching the truth, to any great length, to say that women probably see things a bit differently than this. Indeed, I find my heart goes out to the commenter at Vox’s who observed, probably from bitter personal experience, that women:

…don’t care that you are doing something unproductive as television, though they just don’t understand the allure computer games, but more importantly want to spend time with you. It doesn’t matter if you are watching a John and Kate marathon from hell and shirking minor responsibilities, so long as your butt in on that couch next to her. Women are jealous of the games.

I suppose I could insert all manner of “of course not all”-type statements at this point, but why bother? The good reader hopefully knows — without it being stated — that exceptions to Item 4 exist; if not, the good reader needs his (or her) head adjusted.

What I would like to say is that I think the commenter misses one important point, which is that from the female side of the example he presents, time spent watching a “John and Kate marathon from hell” is not unproductive time at all; it is “quality time” (or is considered to be so). We’ve already addressed this distinction, but let’s go into a bit more depth on it, because it relates to Item 3.

With respect to the commenter who noted the distinction between men and women, issues and problems, there is one further thing that needs to be added here. He is completely correct to note that problems are things to be solved and then forever dropped; what he fails to mention is that issues are things that are never completely resolved, nor are they intended to be. That’s because “issues” really aren’t about the issue at all; they’re about the discussion, the endless discussion of the issue with another person, whether or not the other person cares even slightly about the issue itself.

In like manner, “quality time” that isn’t of any meaning to the male spouse is considered quality time because it’s not about e.g. the show being watched, or the game being played, or the book being read; it’s about sharing an activity regardless of the male spouse’s immersion therein or enjoyment thereof. In other words, it’s the same basic pathology, except played out through action rather than words.

And the response to someone who attempts to sidestep that pathology is much the same in both cases. The friend who refuses to discuss the issue at length gets treated with the same basic hostility as the man who opts to do something he finds actually entertaining/engaging on his own rather than share in the banal activity that is being counted, by his other, as “quality time.”

(I wonder, at times, whether this is the reason that a lot of couples I know of have really become involved either in community groups that cater to an interest shared by both spouses (e.g. choral singing), or (in the case of those couples who also have children) else have taken up gaming together, either as guildmates in a particular MMO, or as allies(or opponents) in LAN games? I suspect this may well be the case.)

And just a note to any family or friends who might be reading this: I won’t say what I really desperately want to say to some of you, because the rest of you that don’t do what I’m about to go off about don’t deserve to hear the invective that I want to pour out on the others.

So let me just say: if you’re reading this article, and if you have a Concern^TM that you just absolutely feel the need to call us (i.e. my wife) about, please resist the temptation to pick up the damn phone. Man up (or woman up) and leave your Concern^TM in a damn comment, or else keep your Concern^TM to yourself. If you can’t say what you want to say about me in a public forum, such as this, then don’t bloody-well say it; it’s just not that damn important.

And be thou advised: if it is at all brought to my attention that you didn’t leave your Concern^TM in a comment, and that you did instead phone your Concern^TM in, guess what? That’s bloggable.

There are apparently a damn lot of you, so have some balls/ovaries and speak the hell up already.

…in case it wasn’t obvious by now.

I do a lot of my blogging on my commute(s)…and since I took this week off of work, I haven’t had many of those.

Things will be back to normal on Monday.

Because I figure it’s high time I at least pretend to be making an effort to drive a bit more traffic to the ol’ blog here.

Now with a picture!

(It’s left up to the reader to figure out which item below this image pertains to.)

Item 1: Given how pervasive things like portable DVD players, portable media players, and even netbooks or small notebooks with sufficient battery life and graphics capabilities to play back high-quality video have become these days, it’s no surprise that drivers have found new ways to utilize these technologies to grow their idiocy by leaps and bounds.

It’s bad enough when that idiocy results in crashes.

It’s worse still when those crashes result in bodily harm or death.

It’s even worse when the video distraction that precipitated a deadly crash was porn.

It’s no secret how dangerous it is for truck drivers to use in-cab computers and navigation systems while driving. Yesterday, the federal Department of Transportation (DOT) prohibited truckers from texting on the road, but, unfortunately, there’s no such ban on other devices.

Now, we’re seeing the heartbreaking results of this lack of action. According to an Associated Press report, a truck driver who was watching porn on his in-cab laptop struck a car near Buffalo, New York this past December, killing the woman inside. Thomas Wallace, a 45-year-old trucker from Ohio, was arrested Tuesday and charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Julie Stratton, a 33-year-old mother. Police say Wallace also broke federal trucking laws by sleeping less than four hours in the 27-hour period preceding the wreck. Stratton was inside the car, which was broken down on the side of a New York State Thruway after she’d hit a deer, when Wallace’s truck swerved and crashed into her vehicle.

While this is a horrible event, it often takes a tragedy to spur positive action. It’s a shame that a woman had to die, but let’s hope Stratton’s death will encourage legislators to clamp down on the truckers who use personal computers while piloting those massive rigs through our highways and byways.

There are times I lament the fact that the law does not have sufficient categories to suitably punish all offenders. Were justice truly served, Wallace would lose his license forever, and serve no small quantity of years behind bars. He will likely endure neither fate, however.

Item 2: Ah, Japan. If you’re a woman, good reader, and you are yearning — just yearning — to visit a society which treats women poorly, but which is not also some fetid Islamic backwater, Japan’s the place for you.

Seriously…the stuff that women have to put up with there is almost beyond comprehension at times. Case in point:

The latest product to come out of the perpetually fascinating land of Japan might just be the most simplistic, yet most disturbing we’ve yet to see. And that’s saying a lot.

A new DVD called ‘Miterudake for Lady‘ is designed to help Japanese women deal with men staring at them…by showing them images of men, well, staring at them. According to the manufacturer Avex, Miterudake (“only seeing” in Japanese) is targeted at the jaded woman whose “heart was almost broken at love and interpersonal relationships.” According to InventorSpot, after a minute of staring into the camera, one of the 51 Japanese men on the DVD will give a reassuring laugh, and offer some words of encouragement.

The Miterudake isn’t only for women who need extra help getting over the “Male Gaze,” though; there’s a version for men, too, and it’s even creepier. The guy version features more of a variety in demographic when it comes to staring subjects, including female twins and octogenarians, among others. And judging from one of the sample clips after the jump, Japanese men apparently get anxious even when school age girls stare at them, for reasons we obviously don’t even want to think about.

Yeesh.

Item 3: Ah, the French. Really the best people to look to if you need to find examples of useless gestures and entirely ineffectual means of fighting battles.

Even when the battle in question is the battle against AIDS:

A replica of a condom-shaped balloon, the “Condomfiere,” is set up at the Palais de la Decouverte on Jan. 26, 2010, in Paris as part of a campaign created by the French association CondomFly. The 40-meter-high Condomfiere will fly on every continent starting next Dec. 1, the World Day against AIDS, to promote condom use and prevention against sexually transmitted diseases.

You know what would be a better shape for that balloon, good reader? A zipper. Regular use thereof will do far more to stop the spread of STDs than a quantity of condoms sufficient to cover the entirety of France ever will.

Item 4: After Avatar, I suppose this was inevitable:

When does 3-D technology transform from a gimmick into a full-blown trend? No, not when live sporting events are broadcast in 3-D, and not even when ‘Avatar’ racks-up enough money to make Bill Gates jealous. No, the technology has finally arrived in its full-frontal glory when the porn industry embraces it, and now, that day has come.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Italian director Tinto Brass said Thursday that he’s ready to create the world’s first 3-D porno flick. You might remember Brass from his infamous 1979 film ‘Caligula,’ which was set in ancient Rome and featured graphic Sex scenes (incest, cheating, and a giant killing machine) that ruffled many feathers. So what’s the premise behind this 3-D porn? Brass says it’ll “revisit an abandoned project about a Roman emperor that was ruined by Americans, and go from there.” Sounds like he’ll really be stretching his creative muscles with this one. Brass says he’ll write the script and cast the film as soon as possible, and he hopes to begin filming in May or June. (Gore Vidal, feel up to the task?)

Item 5: Ah, Verizon…walking the fine line between trendy advertising and crass sexism:

If you ask us, the Palm Pre Plus pretty much sells itself. So if we were working out a promo campaign for it, we’d just display the competitive pricing front and center and get the hell out of the product’s way. But that just wouldn’t do for Verizon. After all the machismo it attached to the Droid, the wireless provider is back with a set of ads for the Pre Plus targeted at the modern lady. We’re not told why two slabs of plastic and silicon with comparable sliding keyboards and similar internals must be compartmentalized by gender, but we don’t really care. The new ads are crazy enough in themselves, so just go see ‘em after the break.

And let’s just be clear: by “the modern lady,” Verizon evidently means sitcom housewives of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Item 6: Surfing porn at work is bad. Surfing porn at work in full view of a news team giving an interview to your boss is bad and also quite stupid.

We’ve all seen news footage of a reporter delivering coverage on location when some joker runs into the frame. What you don’t often get to see is a guy in the background checking out racy photos while his boss gives a live interview.

During an otherwise stale report on the Australian economy for 7 News, the report cuts to Macquarie Bank, where a representative from the company begins explaining interest rates and inflation. For a solid minute, it’s the most uninteresting thing in the world.

And then you notice the man over the rep’s right shoulder who’s looking at what appears to be pictures of naked ladies (Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr, reportedly) — while he’s talking to a co-worker, no less.

The highlight of the entire piece is just after the 1:30 mark, when the horndog takes a moment to look over his shoulder and spots the camera that’s been trained on him the entire time.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Any more and I’d have to call this one: “Rule 5 Thursday: Rampant Human Stupidity Edition.”

I honestly can’t remember where I shot this picture of some flowers, and I haven’t the first clue what kind of flowers they might be. I was just playing around with depth of field, to be honest. I had only just bought my EOS 350D, and was still learning its ins and outs.

…may have to be put on hiatus for a while; suddenly, it would appear to be the case that Lala.com doesn’t play nice with non-US IP addresses.

Fooey.

Dispatch 405nd is up!

Get it while it’s hot! And tasty. And…Canucky.

Mmmm…mapley goodness.

Probably not what you were expecting, though, good reader:

According to Reuters, father Grzegorz Sowa recently installed in his church an electronic fingerprint scanner that keeps track of how often schoolchildren attend mass. If a student attends Mass 200 times over a three-year period, he or she doesn’t have to pass an exam before Confirmation.

Formerly, the kids would have to get the priest to sign a sheet of paper that said they’d been present at mass. Now, they’ll simply press their finger to a screen and be on their way, saving both priest and parishioner time. “This is comfortable. We don’t have to stand in a line to get the priest’s signature [confirming our presence at the mass] in our confirmation notebooks,” said a student named Karolina.

Presented without comment.

A shot down one of the subterranean LRT tunnels that run beneath Edmonton’s downtown core.

Another shot of the old Central Pentecostal Church that used to be near downtown Edmonton. It was sold, torn down, and converted to condominiums, I believe. Or…well, I don’t know if the condos are finished yet.

The old Central Pentecostal Church that used to be near downtown Edmonton. It was sold, torn down, and converted to condominiums, I believe. Or…well, I don’t know if the condos are finished yet.