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Day: June 13, 2003
Gandalfstein, Wizard of Geek.
Stolen from
1. If you could transfer your “personality” into a clone, would you use it to extend your life? Assuming the whole mind/body question was answered by some sort of magic “psyche trensferrance machine” probably, yes. The idea of immortality is alluring – especially if it is under circumstances where you can choose to end it.
2. Would you change your gender if it was a “perfect” change? Nope. Women have it much tougher than guys, not interested, thanks.
3. What’s worse: owning 10 slaves for life, or killing one person for no fun? I would have to say killing someone…although the “no fun” strikes me as odd. If it were a killing for revenge or in retribution for another killing (both of which I see as “no fun”) then I would say the slaves are the worse choice. “Slaves for life” suggests _my_ life, they can go free when I pass away, and would be well taken care of – even given freedom in all sense but legal binding, if this scenario came to pass.
4. Is happiness appreciated more if you spend a lot of time being sad? I’d say yes. Happiness is fleeting at best, so if you live a life which has very little of it, the spots of color make a big difference.
5. What evidence do you have that we are not living in a matrix-like simulation? None, that is what makes existance so fascinating, there are no defineable boundaries which can be cited as concrete proof of reality.
II
1. If you could have different coloured eyes, what colour(s) would you choose and why? Prolly red – i think it would look neat, and noone would have to touch up pictures of me ever again (in the eyes anyhow).
2. When’s the last time you farted in public and how did people react? When I was in Maine, and I believe the only person there at the time (Frank) said “Wooooooow!”
3. If one US state was going to be given to Canada in trade for oil, which one should be given? The District of Colombia, but only if they were going to turn it into a parking lot.
4. Would the world be better off if all “holy sites” that are being fought over were just nuked? Nuked? No…too many environmental aftereffects – razed, absolutely. Let people worship the spiritual purposes of thier faiths, not cling to the limited physical manifestations of it. By this, I mean man-made holy sites…no need to drain the great lakes because they were once revered as the birthwaters of a goddess.
5. Would you rather be castrated and penectomized or have a sex change? Probably castrated – better to keep some of the hardware than lose all of it.
III
1. If you had to pledge to a religion other than your current one (if any), what would it be and why? Probably Wicca – the inherint balance and respect of it is very calming – I don’t belive enough in the ability of humans to interscede on other levels of existance anymore though for its rituals to hold any personal sway over me.
2. Would you rather have no nose or no penis? No nose, a prosthetic nose, and you can still smell…no penis…
3. What’s the most fun you can have in thirty seconds?Well, they say nothing about what precurses the 30 seconds in question, so my guess would probably have to be an orgasm.
4. What is the youngest a person should be allowed to drop out of school at?
I think the idea of manditory education is a mixed blessing. I think that education should always be offered, but th idea of forcing someone to go…I don’t know, I guess it just chafes me.
5. Would you like proof that ghosts exist even if it involved you being haunted in a terrifying manner?Absolutely – the discovery would be well worth the price.
IV
1. If “pioneers” were needed to move to Mars, would you sign up, knowing you could never come back? Yup – there are not enough frontiers in our society anymore, I think that a new one would be a great opportunity.
2. Assuming it’s true, would you like to KNOW that God does NOT exist? Considering that is pretty much how I function now, I guess an outside confirmation of my convictions would be a worthwhile enterprise. I’m curious how I would get this information, or how it would be proven…
3. If you could choose your height or weight, what would you choose? Weight – shave a couple dozen pounds off the torso =).
4. If you had to change your skin colour to an “unnatural” tone permanently, what colour would it be? Hmm, probably a dark blue.
5. Best estimate: how long will you live, and why?I’ve always assumed I was going to die young…in fact, I pretty much assumed 25 was end of the road. THat not being the case, I guess I’ll take it a day at a time and see where things get me.
V
1. Would you rather lose your hearing totally, or 80% of your vision? Hearing – I’d still be able to close caption, computer, read, etc – and I already know how to speak, so I wouldn’t soud like that chick from Sesame Street.
2. If you could change history so that Native Americans stemmed the “invasion”, and make New England and Eastern Canada a sovereign country under their ownership, would you? Heh, if we were talking about stemming the invasion, I’d much prefer the Conquisadores were dispatched, so noone else would have thought it profitable. That, however, not being the spirit of the question, I say abosultely. Who is to say how things would have turned out in that world?
3. If your significant other asked you to get a second
husband/wife/g.f./b.f. in a bisexual polyamorous deal, would u consider it? Consider it, yes – greatly depended on the other person(s), and what my sig other wanted from me in terms of my involvement in the relationship.
4. If you could trade tattoos with someone, who would you trade with?
Well, I doubt anyone would want to trade, since I got nothing to offer.
5. Would the world be better off without emotion? Nope, emotion is one of the defining charactersitics of humans – take that away, and you have a bunch of robo monkeys.
VI
1. If you could change something to the first person you had sex with, what would it be? It would not have been that person =).
2. If you had to eliminate one race from the planet, what race would it be and why? The OED has a great many definitions for race. The simplest one, in the second definition of its use as a noun is ” A group of persons, animals, or plants, connected by common descent or origin”. That being the case, I would probably eradicate all bound by the common liniage of our common ancestor, and hope that evolution would do better on the second go-round.
3. If you could restore one extinct animal, what would it be and why? Probably velociraptors. Predators as smart as humans (at least according to what research suggests) would be good for putting a little bit of human’s fear of nature back into the picture in a big way.
4. Would you rather have GIANT breasts, or no breasts at all? Giant breasts – you can always get surgery…
5. Would you rather work a job you don’t like for 20 hours a week, or a job you love for 60 hours a week, assuming the money made is the same? I’d take the 20 hours – since money is not a factor, that would leave me with far more time to do what I wanted, which you cannot really do as a “job”.
VII
1. Should intelligence tests of some sort be required to vote?
Heh, I don’t really think it matters in the curret political climate… i think that in a true democracy, a certain amount of intelligence should be requires, as well as civil or millitary service of 2 years, to anyone who can vote.
2. If you could be another race, what would it be and why? Again with this race thing. I’d probably want to be an Ancient Egyption, or a Viking.
3. If you had to kill one of your parents, which one would you choose? Hm… now there is a cheery question… I guess it would depend on the reasons why I “ahve to” and the method being used. Not something I am going to premeditate, at any rate.
4. Would you rather live in a place that’s warm all year round, or a place with seasons? Seasons – I like the wintertime.
5. If a marijuana-vaccine is developed (and it is) that makes people sick if they smoke pot, should it be given to kids (with parental consent)? Nope. I think vaccines overall are a bad thing, and an experience-limiting vaccine is about the damn dumbest thing I ever heard. Besides, if you can’t smoke pot, you are much more likely to take up a harder drug as a recreational pasttime.
VIII
1. If you could instantly grant youself the knowledge of one university degree, what would it be? Classics – with focus in Aramaic, and Sanskrit, or Ancient Chinese, or some of the dead Central American Tounges.
2. If you had the opportunity to select your child’s gender, what would it be, and why? Hmm – prolly a son, just to keep tradition alive. Despite my general distain for my name, it’d kind of suck to break a 17 generation game.
3. Would you rather weigh 100 pounds? Shit no, I’d look like spaghetti wearing a sail.
4. If the world pictured in any movie could be made real, what movie would you choose and why? Probably The Stand – it fits most closely with what I see as the only redeeming possibility for our species short of total extinction with a roll of the dice on evolution.
IX
1. Should age limits for voting, drinking, and driving, all be the same, or are they better staggered? Under the current system, they should all the the same, imo. If you are entitled to get behind the wheel, you should be able to choose a leader, or imbibe something which would prevent you from getting behind the wheel, or electing a stooge like chimp-in-chief…
2. If you could play one music instrument really well, what would it be?Drums – you can play drums on anything really, any ohter instrument, you are going to need some other equipment to perform.
3. If it turned out that dogs and cats didn’t like being pets, what should be done with them? Use them to test the possibilities of colonizing Mars.
4. Would the world be better off if everyone thought the same? If by “thought the same” it means that everyone is free to thier own activities, vices, optionions, faiths, and liveleyhoods, (so long as it doesn’t directly cause hurt to another person, willfully or not) without some dumbass system in place to protect them “from themselves” then yup.
5. Would would your pornstar name be, and why? Clint Meatwood, because The Pornalizer told me so.
X
1. If you were being executed, which method would you choose (REAL ones, not joke ones) and why? Firing squad – it impresses into the minds of the exocutioners the atrocity of what they are doing all the more than any other method I think is out there. If I am guilty of something, it offers the parties seeking vengance a constructive way of working out thier revenge.
2. If you got to spend one hour with Osama bin Laden, what would you want to talk about? I don’t know how fluent in English he is. Probably, I’d try to get at nonfundamentalist understandings for his stances and activities…
3. If you could add one skill to your roster, what would it be? The ability to win consistently at gambling.
4. Why do some people seem to have more “luck” than others? Some people are able to percieve better than others – some people are able to take advantage of spur-of-the-moment changes better than others… the ones who can both see the situation coming, and take advantage of things are the ones who are truly “lucky”.
5. Are you a good person and why? No. If there even are any good people left, they are a very slight margin of the population on a while. I think that our species is defined by inherint natures and demeanors. Natures are what you are – demeanors are how you act. I think that centuries of culling has made those with a good nature probably as endangered as say, your average North American tiber wolf. Many people have good demeanors, but that does not make them a good person. I try to keep myself doing good – but nature is not often easily overcome, even with vigilance and constructive effort.
I think my Queezes may have been getting too obscure, perhaps a softball underhand lob will get people interested again…
1. Name the detective played in the “Pink Panther” films by Peter
Sellers.
2. Which important event occurred in San Francisco on April 18,
1906?
3. Who drew the comic strip “Peanuts”?
4. Is the game of piquet played with cards, dice or on a board?
5. What is the capital of the US state of Oklahoma?
6. Which US cargo ship was found mysteriously abandoned in the
North Atlantic in December 1872?
7. In which country was the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky
assassinated?
8. In the Bible, what is the third book of the Old Testament?
9. Members of which British pop group started playing together in
1987 as “On a Friday”?
10. In Arthurian legend, who was the father of King Arthur?
N the year 29477, at the distant end of a strife-torn galaxy, one of the most famous residents of the planet Rubi-Ka is a genetically engineered mutant called Thedeacon.
He is an ugly mutant, prideful and lewd. The spectacle of his wealth is surpassed by the vulgarity of his tongue. He sexually accosts strangers – be they female, male or neuter – and is renowned for his undying fetish for feet.
Thedeacon is also a kind mutant, a leader and beacon. Among Rubi-Ka’s weaker citizens, he is revered for his generosity of mind, for sharing the information others need to prosper. Among the planet’s elite, he is respected for his generosity of spirit, for comforting the lovesick and the lonely.
Thedeacon does not physically exist, of course. In the year 2003, at the blue-collar end of Madison, Wis., he is a struggling, frustrated 27-year-old computer repairman called Richard L. Stenlund.
Rubi-Ka does not physically exist, either. It is a construct within an Internet-based game called Anarchy Online. Every day, thousands visit Rubi-Ka as they log into their $12.95-a-month Anarchy Online accounts. Meanwhile, thousands of others depart for the vast worlds of similar games like EverQuest, Asheron’s Call 2 and Dark Age of Camelot.
Most are merely playing a game, reaching for intermittent diversion. But for some players, these virtual worlds known as massively multiplayer games – filled with real friendships, real love affairs, real jealousies, real hatreds, real esteem – are almost as important as that world of bills in the mail, office politics, personal pain and unfulfilled dreams.
Rick Stenlund is one of those players.
Thedeacon is a celebrity. Mr. Stenlund, meanwhile, feels trapped – trapped in a town too far from big cities where big things happen, trapped in a hand-to-mouth existence, trapped in a mean little culture of cheap thrills and fast-food television.
That is why he has spent an average of seven hours a day in the last month on Rubi-Ka. That is why he has spent more than 2,400 hours on the planet in the last two years. That is why Rick Stenlund has become Thedeacon.
“It’s a total release of the id,” he said one Thursday last month as he sat in a Japanese restaurant in Madison with his wife, Sarah A. Werner-Stenlund, explaining his attraction to Anarchy Online. “I think people are generally false. Even sitting here with you, we are putting on a front. But in A. O. you can really let your true character out. If I want to be a pervert, I am able to do that in A. O. and be a pervert right off the bat.”
Ms. Werner-Stenlund, who seems alternately befuddled and amused by her husband’s other life, put in, “You are a pervert.”
The Stenlunds run a computer repair and assembly business, Affordable PC Services, from the second bedroom of their $655-a-month apartment not far from a boulevard lined with used car dealers and small restaurants, adult bookstores and gas stations.
They don’t get out much. That is partly a result of the couple’s dim finances, but also a result of Mr. Stenlund’s dim view of humanity. “The more you deal with people, the more you hate people,” he said. “It just feels that everybody is so asleep in this world.”
In that other world, however, there is always something happening.
If a game is a rigidly defined artificial activity that is meant to be completed, or won, then products like Anarchy Online are in many ways not really games at all. Rather, they are full-fledged virtual sandboxes. Instead of castles, players build lives.
In Anarchy Online, players create an avatar and then navigate a vast world rendered in colorful three-dimensional graphics. That avatar belongs to one of four mutant species and one of 12 professions. Each profession is strong in different areas. Doctors, for instance, are best at healing. Nano-Technicians, meanwhile, inflict damage by unleashing destructive nanotechnology programs.
Once their avatar, or character, is created, some players flirt. Some team up to defeat fantastic creatures. Others explore deep wilderness. Many undertake quests for wealth and material possessions. What one player considers rewarding another may find insipid. In general, however, most players spend most of their time on a psychologically reinforcing treadmill of sporadic rewards, trying to make their character more capable, progressing in power to Level 200.
Battling other players can generate the social reward of fame and is an integral part of Anarchy Online’s back story: Rubi-Ka is a planet at war, with the pangalactic Omni-Tek Corporation battling a scrappy confederation of rebel clans for control of the planet. Almost all players belong to one side of the conflict or the other.
But even for players who care only about finding the next powerful weapon or piece of armor, an essential reward for those efforts is the esteem and respect (or envy and fear) of other users.
“These hard-core players are the leaders, they are the ones that other players look up to, they are what other players want to be,” Thomas Johnsen, the official Anarchy Online community manager for Funcom, the Oslo-based company that runs the game, said in a telephone interview. “That makes the hard-core players very important, not so much as role models but as measuring sticks for other players.”
In that sense, these games are really only about the relationships among the people who play them. In some way they are like The Sims – the “Seinfeld” of video games – where the goal is simply to manage a character’s everyday suburban existence. In The Sims, however, human relationships are simulated by software. In a massively multiplayer game, where thousands of people can simultaneously occupy a common (if vast) virtual environment, those relationships are real. That may be one reason that The Sims itself has spawned a massively multiplayer offshoot, The Sims Online.
“I think for almost anyone who goes very far into a game like this, the original reason for playing goes away, and it becomes a way to replace parts of your life that you don’t have in real life,” said Oskar Asbrink, 28, a music producer in Stockholm who is known in Anarchy Online as Wolfe, president of Storm, the most powerful player organization in the game. “For many people, it is a way to establish yourself in a community and become prominent for people who might not be able to do that in real life. In the game, anyone can be the boss, the leader, become popular.”
Thedeacon is certainly well known. “Some would say he is famous,” Mr. Johnsen said. “Others would say infamous.”
Perhaps most important, he is ubiquitous, and not just because he often plays more than 40 hours a week. The message boards at forums.anarchyonline.com are a major element of the game community, and Thedeacon has posted more than 3,000 messages since February 2002. At least as important, he is at once self-consciously outrageous and ultimately harmless, a sort of transgalactic RuPaul. Both in the game and on the message boards, Thedeacon often adopts a patois of inner-city slang and hacker dialect. He demands sexual favors from mutants of all species and requests that, in particular, mutant females of the nanomage persuasion provide him their feet.
Most players find his antics amusing. Thedeacon is a member of Storm, and as Mr. Asbrink put it, “We can kind of do anything in the game, and as long as Thedeacon comes along to liven things up, it is more fun for almost everyone. He has that natural entertainer’s personality.”
Like many natural extroverts, Mr. Stenlund actually seems a bit shy offstage. Though articulate and clearly intelligent, he skipped college because he believed that school stifled creativity. Even as a child, Mr. Stenlund was not very outgoing, according to his mother, Marge Jarrells.
“He was pretty close to home most of the time,” Ms. Jarrells, a pianist in Madison, said in a telephone interview. “Growing up, it was kind of hard for him to find his niches, and that is typical for people of high intelligence. They are not as sociable as other people. They are just off to themselves in their little projects.”
In this latest of Mr. Stenlund’s little projects, Thedeacon has also made a name for himself as an excellent warrior. Fantastically wealthy, at Level 200, with the best, rarest equipment, Thedeacon often helps represent the rebel clans in their battles against the forces of Omni-Tek
In recent months, however, Thedeacon has also become a Dr. Phil-like self-help guru and mentor. His guide on “Making LOTS of money as a new player” has become scripture for new citizens of Rubi-Ka and has been viewed on the Web forums more than 35,000 times. When Thedeacon walks through a city, less powerful players flock to him as if they had seen a celebrity on the sidewalk, which they actually have. They ask him to stop so they can take a screenshot with him, just as a teenager might claw to have a picture of herself taken with Justin Timberlake. Mindful of his status, Thedeacon almost always obliges.
“I had seen him on the forums quite a bit and thought he was pretty funny, but when I actually started talking to him in-game I was surprised at how helpful and patient he was,” Eric A. Munchrath, an 18-year-old student near Houston who plays a character called Stuntiliator, said in a telephone interview. “Even though he’s Level 200 and must get swarmed with messages, he always takes time to help out.”
Lately, Thedeacon has spent a lot of time trying to help out his fellow Meta-Physicists, who make up one of the game’s 12 professions. For more than a year, Meta-Physicist players have lobbied Funcom to enhance their profession, widely considered the weakest in the game.
Frightened by the prospect that Meta-Physicists would continue to be left behind, Thedeacon spent two weeks organizing a protest march, held last weekend. Called Black Sunday, it was a success, at least for morale, as about 100 other Meta-Physicists followed Thedeacon on a five-hour hike from the city of Hope to the planetary headquarters of the Interstellar Confederation of Corporations. Funcom acknowledged the protest by turning the sky over the marchers an ominous black (though the company did not provide any concrete information about the future of the profession).
The Meta-Physicist message board clogged with paeans to Thedeacon:
“Deac that was so fun! DEFINETLY the most memorable day in all of AO.”
“Thank you so much for organizing this march Deacon; it is indeed an important day of history on Rubi-Ka for us.”
“Thanks Deacon, for arranging a awesome event. I have NEVER seen anything like it.”
Mr. Johnsen estimated that the average Anarchy Online player spends 10 to 15 hours in the game each week. Funcom does not release subscriber figures, but the game, released in the summer of 2001, appears to have tens of thousands of players.
Perhaps only 3 percent of them are hard-core players like Thedeacon. But then for him, the game has been a particular sort of refuge.
Two years ago the Stenlunds’ Web-based computer company was in a shambles. Within months, their business filed for bankruptcy protection.
“No money,” Ms. Werner-Stenlund recalled. “Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. We were being threatened to be sued left and right, and I think we were both on the verge of swallowing a bottle of pills.”
With the walls closing in, the Stenlunds fled to the mall one day in July 2001, just looking to treat themselves to some small gifts. Ms. Werner-Stenlund bought some shirts. Mr. Stenlund bought Anarchy Online.
“I can honestly say that A. O. helped save my life,” Mr. Stenlund said, sitting on a bench outside the store where his journey began.
Now, however, the couple’s most important goal is to relocate to an exotic destination in this galaxy: Las Vegas.
“This has been a rough week financially, but at the end of the month we have to move or we’re out on the street,” he said on Sunday by phone with a halfhearted chuckle.
In his Las Vegas future, he sees a job and perhaps a return to school to improve his employment prospects, even if that means less time for Anarchy Online. “I mean, I can’t be poor like this any more,” he said. “We’re not living happy lives right now.”
But for Thedeacon, at least, things have never been better. “It was incredible how the community really pulled together,” he said, ebullient over Sunday’s protest. “The turnout was great, and the Funcom folks showed up, and the sky turning black, and I’m just thrilled about it all.”