Welcome SykoShadow to the Thoughtful Gamer(s) Blog!!

The Thoughtful Gamer is about to be renamed The Thoughtful Gamers, as my friend SykoShadow has joined the blog as a contributing author. In addition to the new author, the blog will now be displaying multiple blog posts per page; likely three but I am still playing around with this. Between 3-5 will be the final number, I imagine.

Atheist Billboard in North Carolina Defaced. NEWSFLASH, PEOPLE: "One Nation Under God" is DIVISIVE!!!!

I was sent a news story by a friend over MSN tonight. The story is entitled 'Atheist billboard defaced on N.C.'s Billy Graham Parkway' and it can be found at the following link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts2936?b

An excerpt from the story:

Unknown vandals unhappy about atheists' billboard in Charlotte, N.C., spray-painted "Under God" on the ad, the city's atheist association discovered Monday. The defaced message will remain in place until after July 4, the group reports, which is the soonest that workers can furnish a fresh billboard image. Here's how the vandalized billboard now looks:



The billboard reads, "One Nation Indivisible," which is the phrase preceding the 1954 insertion of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, reports the Charlotte Observer's Tim Funk. The billboard was erected on Billy Graham Parkway last week. (Graham is, of course, the state's famous evangelical preacher.)

Alpha Protocol Xbox 360 Review

Alpha Protocol Xbox 360 Review-
Choose Your Own Adventure

Alpha Protocol is a 3rd person Action RPG developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by SEGA. The game has you assume the role of Michael Thorton, a newly recruited secret agent working for the top secret organization known as the Alpha Protocol.

Note: This Alpha Protocol Xbox 360 Review can also be found HERE.

Psychology: Science? Unscientific? Bullshit? Pt. 3

This is a follow up to THIS post, entitled "Psychology: Science? Unscientific? Bullshit? Pt. 2"

Some further discussion has taken place. A new comment from him, in response to the last one I gave (featured in part two of this (originally not intended to be a) series:

Then again I never studied psychology so thank you for elaborating. I just don't know how that general psychology or psychoanalysis as you pointed out helps any in the business world other than bettering someone as a person. I feel the same about art even though I am kind of an artist myself; I think it's totally useless unless you're actually going into art.

And my response to that was as follows:

Well, I'm not sure why you're using the business world as an endpoint (remember though, I still basically agree with your contention), but if that's the one you're going with, I suppose one could argue that, ina ddition to bettering yourself, as you pointed out, you could possibly use an understanding of the human psyche to aid yourself in processes like detecting falsehoods, guaging prospective employees, social networking, closing deals, etc.


Not that I really buy that (well, to some limited degree, sure) but I think that could be an argument. Although, if you remove the business world as the end goal, you have all sorts of ends: the sake of knowledge, interest, interpersonal relationships (famiial, marital, etc), professional endeavours (counselling), etc etc.

I was never a fan of it, but I don't think it's wise to write it off entirely (not that you or I are necessarily doing that).

If you compare real world benefits of something like your field and psychoanalysis, I think that the clear winner is your field. I think the argument could be made that of all areas of study, mathematics is probably the most important, as much as I hate(d) it.

What do you think? If you offered an opinion after part one and/or part two, does this have any bearing on your opinion at all? As always, feedback is mucho appreciado.

EDIT: Go back to part one to see a comment from this very same person. His original opinion is no longer one that he holds to the letter. I think we had a productive dialogue here. I also got his major wrong :(

Psychology: Science? Unscientific? Bullshit? Pt. 2

This is a follow up to THIS post, entitled "Psychology: Science? Unscientific? Bullshit?"

A bit more discussion has taken place. Him:

At the same time many psychological hypotheses are not testable and repeatable and that is a controversy in psychology. Modern psychology does use the scientific method a lot so that's why I consider it to be somewhat of a science. I totally agree with what you said about neuropsychology and evolutionary psychology but when I was talking about psychology being 'lame' I was talking about the main branch of psychology that most people study in college. I think it's kind of useless in the business world, not totally though.

And my response:

You're talking about psychoanalysis, and you're 100% right. However, I don't think that's the most studied branch of psychology. I think (at least, it was at the university I attended), that psychoanalysis was taught in intro psyc as a starting point, and also in history of psyc courses. I could be wrong though, as this is only based on one school. I can say that there are so many branches of psyc now that I feel confident thinking that it's probably no longer #1, and I DO know that it's an area of contention within pyschology itself.


When I studied psychology, I took courses on psychopharmacology, neuropsychology, psychology of health, psychology of sleep, personality, learning psychology, psychology of media, social psychology, behavioural pychology, cognitive beahvioural therapy, etc etc etc. The only times I ever really studied psycholanalytic theory was in intro pych (aka psyc 101 as it is commonly referred to) and in the 4th year borefest, history of psychology. I believe a bit of it was also covered in a philiosophy class I took, as some of it wasrelevant to some of the philiosophical ideas we studied, but the details of this are hazy.

Thanks for the eaboration though, and I must say (and I say this with no condescension, I swear) that this serves as an example of how we must be careful when we speak, as it is easy to totally screw up and have our message be misconceived. I mean, you stright up denigrated all of psychology, when really, you were taking issue with a paritucular area of study within it. There's a huge difference there, and I went from being a bit....well, off put to completely understanding and even agreeing (although we could both be wrong in our conceptions, and I am sure there are plenty of people out there who would like to alleviate us of our misconceptions!!!!) (and they'd probably have a big problem with me, having studied it and all lol).

What do you think? If you offered an opinion after part one, does this have any bearing on that at all? Mine might not, as it is merely a retread since I had already discussed psychoanalytic theory, but his comment probably will, as it represents further clarification on his end; clarification which changed the way I saw his original comment, and quite likely may for you as well.

As always, feedback is mucho appreciado.

Horror Story: Memories Along a Fault Line (Conclusion).

This is the second and final part. Part One can be found HERE

This vision however, was just that, although it was actually retroactive in nature; just her dreaming mind adding its bizarre touch on an already bizarre real occurrence. The skull and ring of fire were just the horrific embellishments of the dream state. The first transition during wakefulness, and the accompanied change in lovemaking behaviour, however, were not. Neither were the cackle and the wink, and these, in conjunction with the crazed look on his face and the sudden change, were so horrifying, that the fire skull would have added little to her terror.


Now her dreaming mind took her to early March, 1995.

Bonnie awakening in the night. Lying on her left side, facing Bobby's side of the bed, she opened her eyes and saw.....nothing. No sign of Bobby. Turning over so that she was in the Supine position, she sat up, and was met with a frightening sight that stopped her cold. Bobby was standing at the foot of the bed, only it wasn't Bobby. Whatever it was that was inside of him was standing at the foot of the bed, and it was brandishing a knife, and it was grinning maliciously.


Eyes wide, she surveyed the situation. He was standing about three feet in front of the bed. The doorway, and only exit, was behind him and to the right. She contemplated jumping off of the side of the bed and running for it, but she knew that he would easily be able to get to her, if of course that was his goal. Which, of course, judging by the knife in his hand and the malevolent look on his face, it was.

Get moving then, her mind, always the pragmatist, insisted, And do it now!

Bonnie, feeling her fear manifest itself as a lump in her throat and a cold sweat on her back, quickly slid off the left side of the bed and groped for the dresser, realizing that her best shot was distraction. She groped for something she could throw at him, and she knew she needed to be quick about it. Keeping her gaze fixed on what used to be her husband, she blindly reached until she got ahold of something. It was her jewellery box.

It'll have to do, she thought.

And so, she wound up and threw the wooden box directly at his (it's?) face, and at the same time, dove across the bed, jumped off and ran for the door. She reached the doorway and came to a dead stop, uttering a bloodcurdling scream.


Bobby/it had hold of her and he was cutting into the back of her neck with the knife.


Feeling more pain and terror than she had ever thought possible, she, acting on complete instinct, threw her head forward and simultaneously kicked backwards as hard as she could. Amazingly, she managed to slip free of his grasp and took of running down the stairs, with him bellowing after her.

And then her dream shifted to mid March.

Bobby in custody. Bonnie, having decided that she would ignore her rational mind and just give it a try out of desperation, ignored the psychologists and had approached the local Catholic priest, telling a tale that was met not with incredulity, but a solemn seriousness that both unsettled and oddly reassured her, despite her intellectual and critical objections.


And so here she was. Bonnie and Father Belham, thanks to a favour granted by their lawyer, in a room with a chained up Bobby, who was, much to her relief, in one of what Bonnie referred to as his refractory periods. This struck her as doubly fortuitous, as these periods were growing more and more infrequent.

Flash forward through the introductions, explanations, demurring, pleading, solemn warnings, and eventual reluctant acceptance, and her dream finds her at the moment of truth.

Father Belham bent over Bobby, head on his forehead, reading from the Bible. Bobby sat, eyes closed, playing his part. And, contrary to Bonnie's expectations, her terrified eyes were met not with the grandiose stuff of film and literature, but a calm, quiet proceeding that was over in minutes and featured no climax whatsoever. Father Belham continued as he was for a few minutes, stood, pulled Bobby's eyelids both downwards and upwards, and said a few words to him, and then, seemingly satisfied, he walked towards Bonnie, and, escorting her out of the interrogation room, explained to her that things should turn out alright.

Bonnie awoke, the dreams resonating with her, lingering, reminding her of the events of that year long period in their lives. Steadying her breathing, she reminded herself that those events were long over. Bobby had, after much bureaucracy, testimony, and psychiatric care (unnecessary but impossible to get anyone to believe that) returned home, although home was now Cleveland. They had left Pittsburgh, and the events there, far behind them.

(or did you?)

Bonnie ignored the thought. There was no reason to think otherwise. Bobby had been his normal self ever since.

(had he really Bonnie?)

Sure, there were little lapses in his usual demeanour at times, but after what he'd been through, who would expect otherwise?

(what about two nights ago, Bonnie?)

Bonnie shuddered. Images tried to penetrate her consciousness but she did not let them. Realizing that she had been unconsciously rubbing at the scar Bobby had left on the back of her neck, a constant reminder of that dark time, she stopped and rolled over, wanting to wrap her arms around Bobby and assuage the discomfort that she was now feeling.

Except Bobby wasn't there.

Bonnie looked out to the hallway, and saw a dim light. Listening, she heard the faint sound of slightly running water, and the occasional curious metallic clinking sound.

Sounds like something hitting porcelain, she thought. What the fuck? Is he shaving?

Perturbed, she climbed out of bed and left the bedroom. She walked down the hall, her nightgown billowing out around her, and as she approached the open door of the bathroom, she, just by sound, ascertained that he was indeed shaving. She was filled with unease.

Why is he shaving in the middle of the night?


(ah, a part of you knows already, Bonnie, a part of you knows)

Bonnie's arms broke out in gooseflesh, and she pulled her nightgown tight around her, and, with her arms crossed tight against her chest, and her breath held, she entered the bathroom, and when she was met with the scene inside she screamed the scream of the mad.

Inside the bathroom, Bobby, or whatever it was that was inside of his body, was standing at the sink, shaving, a malevolent gleam in his/its eye. The water ran red with blood.

Bobby, or whatever it was that was in his place, was slowly shaving off pieces of his/its face. He/it looked up, and, meeting Bonnie's horrified gaze in the mirror, shook bloody chunks of skin off of the straight razor and, realigning it, started to take a strip off of his/its right cheek.

Bonnie fainted, and Bobby/it went right on shaving.

Horror Story: Memories Along a Fault Line (Part One).

      Lying next to him, feeling his heart beating inside of his chest, the beat strong and rhythmic, not arrhythmic, irregular, weak, or, perhaps (no, Bonnie, not perhaps, certainly) best of all, not the pounding, alacritous pattern known as tachycardia, she could hardly believe that the events in Pittsburgh had actually occurred.
    
  Ah, but you have the scar to prove it, don't you Bonnie? she thought. You know the one you instinctively run your finger alongside when you get anxious? Especially if that anxiety revolves around Bobby.

      Bonnie pushed the thought aside, and held tighter to Bobby as she closed her eyes and willed her nervous system to begin what she thought of as the shutdown routine, which was how she visualized her bodies' preparations for sleep. A computer, shutting down for the night, only to (hopefully) reboot in the morning, refreshed and strong, ready to tackle the day's challenges. She clung tight to Bobby and, feeling the patterns of both his respiration and pulse (both strong and exuding a comforting vitality, even in their sleep slowed states) she slowly plunged downwards into one of Poe's little slices of death; a night's slumber. And, as they often did, the events from the time spent in Pittsburgh revisited her during the night.

      There hadn't been any shouts of “The power of Christ compels you!” There had not been any pea soup vomit; nor had there been any three hundred and sixty degree head revolutions or any walking down stairs in a wholly terrifying upside down crab like shuffle. No “your mother sucks cock!” No masturbation with a crucifix. The events was no less serious; it was much more so, in fact, as the events in Pittsburgh had not been contained to the fantastical realm of the film woven through a movie reel. They may have been less, well, theatrical, but they were much more disconcerting. Much more terrifying.
   
       What preceded the events of that night was a slow but steady change in personality. Bobby's usual cheery demeanour had, in March of 1994, begun to show signs of intermittent slippage, almost like wear and tear on spark plugs resulting in the occasional misfire or hindered turnover. By September, these misfirings had almost become as probable as a normally Bobby day. In December, the mental abuse had begun.

      It had started with an incorrect bill payment. More to the point, Bonnie had accidentally overpayed on the previous months' gas bill, and Bobby had lashed out in a vitriolic stream of shouted curses and insults. Really nasty, horrible things, unwarranted, certainly, but more than that; the were completely and utterly without precedent. Even with his puzzling slow but steady decline in affect, he had never, ever been downright malicious, and in the time Bonnie had come to think of as Before, he would never had come even remotely close to admonishing her with any real expressed anger over something so trivial, let alone actually verbally assaulting her, but on December 4th, of 1994, sitting at the kitchen table, going over the financial records for the previous month and stumbling upon an overpaid gas bill dated November 17th, Bobby had marked a milestone in his After period by verbally abusing his wife Bonnie.
    
    There he was, in vivid detail, again at the kitchen table. His black hair damp against his forehead as he literally poured over the bills, paying excruciatingly close attention to all manner of fine detail; detail so fine it was not exaggeration to refer to it simply as minutia; the sort of stuff the Before Bobby would have skipped over with a wave of his hand, if any outward expression at all. Not this new Bobby, however. And certainly not this month, which seemed to be the worst thus far in a linear progression of a steadily worsening demeanour, slightly noticeable on a day to day basis, very noticeable if you backed up and took a month by month perspective on things. From that angle, you could almost see the trend angling upwards, plotted on a graph in black magic marker, with months listed along the X axis, and 'negativity intrusions upon the affect' on the Y axis. One could even imagine the title of the imaginary plotted figure, if one were so inclined: 'Inverse Relationship Between Positive Affect and the Passage of Time in Unceremoniously and Inexplicably Changed Males.' A word other than 'changed' occurred to Bonnie
    
     (possessed)
    
     but she did not pay it any heed. Even in sleep, the word was one that haunted her, and she would try her damnedest to avoid consciously thinking of it.

      Bonnie had been sitting across from him, watching as he spent several minutes per bill, agonizing over every detail, his brow soaked with sweat and his jet black hair, hair that Bonnie had, innumerable times over the course of their eight year marriage, run her fingers through, both in the throes of passion and outside of that aspect of the marital relationship, dampened with sweat, stuck to hi anyways). He tossed the bill he was currently examining aside and brought the next one to the front of the pile. He began to move his lips as he read the contents of the bill, and Bonnie had time to note two things before the events of the day, acting, unbeknownst to her at the time, as a harbinger of (much worse) things to come, took a turn for the worse.

     The first thing she noted was that for as long as she had known him, she had never witnessed him mouthing along with whatever it was that he was reading, and yet now he had been lightly reading aloud everything that he would normally have tackled silently, since the onset of whatever it was he was currently afflicted with. And this observation was the genesis for the second observation, which, while seemingly undeniable, was something that she wished she could both unsee and especially unhear: Bobby was reading aloud everything that he was reading while he was reading it........except he was reading aloud in a very ancient sounding language, a language that Bonnie was positive that he did not know........and he was reading in someone (or something) else's voice.

      His voice sounded thick, dark, leathery, scratchy, and old. Very, very, very old. It was a voice that conveyed an immense age, an immeasurable amount of power, and, just under the surface, perhaps more perceptible to some than to others, a hint of malicious intent. A malignancy bubbling beneath the surface, like the cancerous cells of a tumour rapidly metastasizing just beneath the surface of the skin; a dangerous process thinly veiled by the faintest of covers.

     The sound of that voice brought a chill to Bonnie's spine.

     Transfixed, Bonnie sat and observed her husband pour over utility bills with a fine toothed comb, until he hit upon something that stopped him dead in his tracks, bringing an end to the sound of that voice, and when he next spoke, at a normal (well, slightly raised), volume, it was with his own voice, and it was in English. Not a trace of any foreign languages or strange voices were to be heard.
     Had she imagined it?
    
    Did I really hear that, she had wondered, or was I imagining it? She knew that her husband's sporadic, often incomprehensible (compared to his norm) behaviour as of late could easily have inspired such an, such a (what? Hallucination? Vision? Aural imagining?), well, such an event . Well, either way, it was a non issue at the moment, because he husband's voice was back to normal, except for one little detail.

     He was shouting and cussing at her, hurling nasty insults like little invisible javelins; javelins that cut through the fabric of relationships that is woven between two individuals. Throw enough of them and that fabric is ripped apart, severing the ties that bind.

     Pulled away from her thoughts, and brought back to the reality of the moment, his voice suddenly swelled and filled her realm of comprehension like sound returning to the world when resurfacing after an underwater dive. Momentary confusion cannibalized by sudden clarity and a return to normal comprehension. Only this time, there was nothing normal to comprehend. Never in his Before period had Bobby acted in such a way.

      A nasty array of words, concocted and issued side by side and simultaneously, all with a singular goal: to hurt. To admonish, to chastise, to rebuke. All because of a simple error: the accidental overpayment of a gas bill (which of course could easily be rectified, with the aid of a simple phone call and perhaps ten to fifteen minutes to reach the proper channels and enter the appropriate information).

     The insults and curses kept coming, but now they were fading, fading away, as the dream shifted (as dreams so often do) forward in time, from December of 1994 to February of 1995, which was about a month shy of the one year anniversary of the beginning of the period Bonnie had come to know as Bobby's After period.

     The February-March 1995 period of their Pittsburgh ordeal played out rather quickly in reality, but in the Wild West that was time constraint in the world of dreams, the ordeal played out in the theatre of Bonnie's mind in mere seconds. As her eyes danced the dance of dreams in their sockets, her dreaming mind replayed the least few significant and terrifying events of the period of their lives known to her as either The Pittsburgh Ordeal, or Bobby's After period.

     Dinner table, sometime in February. Bonnie watching in perplexed horror as Bobby slowly cut a gash into his left wrist using the steak knife which he grasped in his right hand. He started at the palm of his hand, and worked his way up, only stopping after cutting a gash six or seven inches long, at which time he affixed his horrified wife with a gaze that screamed insanity; eyes bug eyed and bloodshot, black hair standing on end, right hand holding onto the knife still digging into the flesh of his left wrist. After staring at the horrified Bonnie for several seconds, seconds which had seemed to her in the moment to be successive eternities, he spoke, and for the first time since December that other voice had returned, but this time it managed to speak a broken sort of English, although said English was couched in random segments of what appeared to be nothing but gibberish.

     “Entah, untah, down the street, ugang, lugang, not across the road, barkah, sparkah, bitch slut hoe, twinkle toe, happah, dappah, that will be $3.99 bitch, you pay, I play, a love lost.” Bobby chanted this strange lullaby of insanity before bursting out into a strangled sounding, screeching sort of laughter.

     Even in the dream, Bonnie felt the ice cold fear grip her chest and run its marble fingers down her spine, in that practised way it had, having of course done it for time immemorial. She sat there, a prisoner in the iron grip of fear, completely at a loss as to what, if any, her next course of action should be.

     The dream, however, decided for her. Flash ahead to later that month.

     The bedroom, night. Bobby and Bonnie were engaged in lovemaking, their bodies draped together, limbs entwined, joined at member and mouth, Bonnie grateful for the break in Bobby's condition. They were far more sporadic now, but they still (fortunately) occurred. Like a break in stormy weather, when the rain would stop and the sun would break through the clouds, casting its exalting glow over the gloomy, rain soaked day, Bobby, the real Bobby, would break through for a while, and Bonnie, often dizzy with gratitude, would come at him with a barrage of questions and ideas, which all boiled down to you need help and we can do this together, both of which would be met with a very mild rebuke, the prevailing sentiment being I'm fine, it's just a bit of stress, it'll pass.

      Of course, Bonnie was never satisfied, and she also knew better; however, she would also be so thrilled (and relieved) to have her Bobby back for the time being that she would drop the matter in favour of conversation, lovemaking, a meal, whatever. Just average, everyday, boring old married couple things that, when they occurred so few and far between, felt more like a honeymoon than they did boring old marital activities. Even something as mundane as cleaning the house together would feel exquisite. Yet, Bobby never seemed to share in her joy, at least not to the same extent she felt it. It was as though he was unaware of the true extent of his condition and therefore was always slightly bemused when he would be met with an absolutely ecstatic wife upon the discovery that he was in one of what she came to think of as his refractory periods, a designation whose subtext was not lost on her.


     And so they were enjoying eachother on an intimate level during one of Bobby's refractory periods when something unprecedented occurred. Up until that point, Bobby's slippage in and out of his condition was preceded by, and took place during, sleep. However, this time he had transitioned during wakefulness, and it happened so suddenly that Bonnie was at first unaware. One moment she was underneath her husband, who was slowly making love to her, rhythmically synching his movements with hers, and the next she was underneath a madman whose thrusts were crazed and desperate. Animalistic and crude, she was being taken as opposed to being enjoyed, and when she looked up into her husband's face, an inquisitive look still forming upon her own, what she saw would haunt her for the rest of her natural life.

     In place of her husband's face was a grinning, gleaming human skull, with a ring of fire for hair, and a crimson mask, likely blood, upon its cheeks. When she glanced up at the dead thing ravaging her from the inside, just as she screamed, it cackled and dropped her a stomach churning wink, as if to say “Is it as good for you as it is for me, baby?”

CONCLUSION