This morning, as I was getting ready for work, CNN was playing in the background, with a report about Americans trapped in Cancun after Wilma came through. They were playing a clip from a woman who was now stranded in Cancun, and she said (I’m paraphrasing):

It’s horrible. It’s so hot in here, and all we have is a little fan to try to keep us cool. I don’t understand why the government hasn’t come to get us yet.

I don’t know if this attitude is one that was inspired by the media coverage of Katrina or simply a byproduct of our self-centered society, but I nearly went into shock upon hearing that. It’s bad to expect the government to come riding to your rescue when you’re at home and hit by a hurricane. The government can’t take that responsibility from you without taking it from everyone else, and it can’t do that without major infringements on our rights. Still, it’s understandable that, if you’re at home and you feel helpless to leave, you’d want someone to help you out. I personally think that’s a function of charitable organizations, but, hey, that’s me.

As bad as that is, though, it’s something entirely different to expect the government to come running into a foreign country to “save” you. Why?

1. The federal government is forbidden to intervene in its own country without a request for help from a state government. It’s almost certainly not going to send troops to save you on foreign soil in a country that we are not at war with (nor willing to go to war with) unless they’ve explicitly asked for us to come in and help out (and even then, you probably won’t get any special priority). Expecting otherwise is silly.
2. In Louisiana, those people who were desperately asking for help at least had the excuse that they hadn’t had the means to leave. The fact that you’re in a foreign country kind of indicates that you’re not exactly without the means to travel a bit. Did you hear the news stories about the hurricane and think to yourself, “Oh, well, a hurricane. That should be fun!”?
3. Nothing I heard indicated you were in any real danger of dying. The complaint you repeated, a few times, was that it was hot. You’re in Cancun! Now, I’ve never actually been to Cancun, myself, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a popular tourist location because of its ski slopes and dogsled races.

   I have a friend who recently headed to Antartica to work for a while (six months? A year? I have no idea what the usual “rotation” there is). If she called CNN and demanded that the U.S. government come and get her because it was so cold, you’d laugh at her, and rightly so. How is this any different?

I don’t mean to sound heartless, but this reminds me of the big outcry about the girl who disappeared in Aruba. “The government should do something!” Look, you’re in a foreign country, and while our government might have some sway, the truth is, when you’re in a foreign country, you’re basically at the mercy of the foreign government. If something happens to you, there’s frightfully little that your government is entitled to do, and that is how it should be.

I don’t understand why this is so hard for some people to comprehend.

…and why I keep playing them.

“Hell is other people,” Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in No Exit. In the world of Massively Multiplayer Online Games, I have to agree with him. The selling point of Massively Multiplayer games (the fact that there are many, many players) is also the downfall of these games, because people, for the most part, are idiots.

Players present problems in MMOGs in three ways:

1. There are way too many people who take themselves and the game way too seriously. Honestly, it’s a game. If you never take any risks, but instead play every single fight exactly the same way, with the same people playing exactly the same roles, things get very boring very quickly. Yes, you’ll get levels faster by playing the formula, but your brain will turn to mush and leak out your ears.

   Really.

2. The second major problem with MMOGs is the overwhelming presence of the psychopaths. These people have no functional concept of a fair fight, but are instead intent on annoying people in whatever ways they can. These people can be seen running from any fight where they both (a) don’t outnumber their opponents by at least three-to-one and (b) aren’t at least fifteen levels above their opponents. Ideally, these people also play a class that allows them to cheat, such as the World of Warcraft “Paladin” class, which has an (undispellable!) ability that makes them completely immune to any attack. Based on my observations, this ability lasts approximately 10 seconds, requires minimal cast time and mana, and has a cooldown time of approximately 10.1 seconds.

   If you’ve ever played World of Warcraft, you can usually identify psychopaths by their membership in the Alliance.

3. The third group of players that ruin Massively Multiplayer gaming is also the most prevalent. These are the true idiots, the people who couldn’t find the shift key on their keyboard if their lives depended on it, and who believe that the pronoun referring to one’s listener is spelled “u”. While these people are only a minor annoyance when taken individually, the fact that they apparently multiply like Tribbles and participate in these activities outside of the game world makes them the worst of the bunch.

   Honestly, gaming is supposed to be an escape from idiots, and the Massively Multiplayer gaming phenomenon (and, indeed, internet gaming as a whole, not just MMOGs) is quickly making me realize that there is no escape.

So, why do I keep participating in online gaming? Pretty much for the same reason I’ve always enjoyed multiplayer video games that weren’t on the internet. With the right group of friends, it’s an extremely rewarding experience. Since my friends and I are now scattered a bit farther than we’ve been in the past, internet gaming provides the best venue for us to get together and have some fun.

My idea of an ideal online game would be an RPG that allows me to group together with a few friends and have very little interference from other players. Since that doesn’t seem to be appearing anytime soon, we’ll just have to continue to make do playing City of Heroes.

When it started showing up in various online communities, I decided that this year, I’d simply forget that Nanowrimo is upon us. I mean, it’s been a long time since I’ve really had anything longer than a blog post that I wanted to write, and there’s no sense starting if I’m just going to lose interest in it by the end of the first week.

(I would like to point out here that choosing November for Nanowrimo is a bit problematic, since that’s when all the good videogames are coming out as Christmas comes rushing at us.)

Then, I told myself that City of Villains comes out at the end of this month (tentatively?), and I could always write 2,000 words a day about an aspiring supervillain. That would make City of Villains time productive time, since I would be busy getting inspiration for the next chapter. …Right? Probably not, but it was an easy way out (assuming, of course, that I would actually write, which seems unlikely, but let me have my delusions, okay?).

Whether that’ll be what I end up writing or not, I have decided, once again, to try to write a very bad novel as quickly as I can write it. I will almost guarantee that no one in their right mind will ever want to read this novel (not even me), but bits of it may actually find their way here. We’ll see.

Anyway, I want to share the pain, so if you haven’t already, go sign up! If you’re a blogger who’s participating, please let me know. I may create a special NaNoWriMo blogroll (so I can share all two of my readers with you).

Though I enjoy it, I don’t normally watch college football (or any football, for that matter). In fact, if I’d been at home this weekend, I likely wouldn’t have watched WVU beat Louisville 46-44 in a triple-overtime.

It would’ve been a shame, and though I normally don’t like trips to North Carolina, I’m glad I made this one, if only because it caused me to watch (most of) this game. I was very pleased to see my alma mater pull this one off.

I find things like this article on proxemics fairly interesting.

I don’t particularly care for people standing too close to me, and I thought to myself when I started reading that article that I prefered a distance of a least ten feet, but after finishing and thinking about it, those distances she gives seemed about right.

(Sorry for the short post, but I’m leaving for North Carolina shortly.)