Mar 2010

Mar 13

oh noes! something on the internet pissed me off!

I'm still not really in the right frame of mind to write a well-thought out blog post to explicate the thoughts that led me to stop visiting Friendfeed for now.

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Mar 13

offline

One of the other reasons why playing Final Fantasy XIII has been therapeutic to my mind is that I don't have to be online to play it. I don't have to read the idiocy that is part and parcel of World of Warcraft's Trade Chat, where racism, homophobia, and misogyny are frequent features. I don't feel the need to Command-Tab over to some social media site and read about atheists bashing Christians, Ayn Rand-inspired insanity, and people jumping all over other people who happen to react viscerally to racist terms, even when they realize it's being used ironically, and not in a malicious manner at all. Instead, all I have to do is watch the pretty animation and mash on a limited number of buttons.

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Mar 13

not so final fantasy

I'm a total sucker for this series, having played the very first one on the original 8-bit NES, back when I was still in 8th grade. I played FFIV (originally released in the U.S. as FFII) right before I started college, FFVI (originally released in the U.S. as FFIII) in my (I think) sophomore year. When FFVII came out, I ended up buying myself a Sony Playstation my senior year in college. I played FFVIII during my first year in med school. I skipped FFIX and FFX/FFX-2, and have never played the MMORPG FFXI, but I played FFXII during my 3rd year in residency, while on vacation, right after one of my cousins died and I was feeling decidedly antisocial. It's kind of weird realizing how all these games bring back these memories of things that happened right around the time I played them.

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Mar 18

it's always darkest right before it goes pitch black

I've always believed that despair is not synonymous with the absence of hope. But it now just occurs to me that despair is actually when you begin to believe that having no hope would be preferable to the slim fragile sliver of hope that you're clinging to, even as it wounds you with its seeming impossibility, like a piece of shrapnel inching its way slowly through the flesh of your heart with every beat, as your life's blood seeps away drop by drop while you pine away for something you can't figure out how to achieve, no matter how many nights you've spent lying awake in the darkness, your gut paralyzed, silent, and still, acid gnawing and rasping at your entrails.

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