This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://kyleadolson.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://kyleadolson.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Toxic

For those of you with an Xbox 360, my XNA Community Game, Toxic.

It's a simple but addictive puzzle game.

Everybody wants free stuff.

Several politicians have recently come under fire for getting discounted loans from Countrywide Financial. Roland S. Martin has an article about it on cnn.com.

Be honest: How many of you are really shocked to find out that a bunch of Washington insiders were part of a VIP program coordinated by mortgage giant Countrywide Financial?

Right. Corruption in DC, nothing new.

The story was first reported by CondeNast's Portfolio magazine, and everyone else has jumped on it since. Based on what we know, folks like former Housing and Urban Development honcho Alphonso Jackson, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala got favorable loan terms from the mortgage behemoth.

My first reaction was, "Man, these folks are dumb to think they could get away with it!"

Sure. I don't completely agree about the dumb part, but we're still on the same track.

But as I was preparing to go on CNN Tuesday, it dawned on me that if most folks were in the same situation, and it wasn't illegal, they would love to have the hookup!

Right, everybody loves to get free stuff when it's legal. Some people like to get it when it's illegal, like the people on this list. I can't tell you exactly what law was broken here, but I'm pretty sure that if you're a senator or cabinet member and you call up the CEO of a major lending company, and ask for and receive a discounted loan for a saving of tens of thousands of dollars, you've received a major gift and are in violation of federal law and should be kicked out of office and into the slammer.

We are a nation that loves anything VIP. Come on, don't sit there and try to be so righteous. If you had an opportunity to be a part of the program, you would jump at it.

Absolutely. If the head of a Countrywide had called me and said, hey, how about a discounted loan as part of a friend of the CEO program, I probably would have jumped. Because I'm not in the senate and I wouldn't be committing a crime. If I was a senator, I'd like to believe that I would be interested in avoiding the commission of a felony.

OK, fine. Let's do something on a smaller scale. Do you remember when you were in high school and you found out that you had a buddy working at the movie theatre, your first thought had to be, "Cool! I get to get in free!"

You could apply that same response to a girlfriend working at the fast food restaurant. "Uh, oh, free burgers every Friday night!"

Right. We're all just as bad as the senators. We're all bad people. We look up to bad people. Skipping ahead:

Professional athletes? They get the hookup all the time. TV and big-screen stars? Oh, you know they are always getting the preferential treatment.

The difference is, there's nothing Illegal about that VIP treatment. There's no law against bribing and athlete to come into your club, or bribing an actress to wear your designer dress. There's a law against giving gifts to government officials, particularly elected officials.

This is in no way an effort to excuse the behavior of these politicos. They are undoubtedly using their positions as elected officeholders to get something the average Joe can't. But don't average Joe and Jane like it when they also get something by virtue of their connections?

Really it sounds exactly like an effort to excuse the behavior of the aforementioned politicos. Remember: Straw men average Joe and Jane are not senators, and would not have been committing a crime by taking the loan.

Right now, in some small town, suburb or big city, there are star athletes who get free meals and other perks from local establishments for doing well on the field or the court. Should they? According to the rules, no. But how many parents are quick to say, "Oh, no, don't do that. It's just not right"? Again, be honest.

Well, not Reggie Bush's parents.

This is what some call situational ethics. Depending on the situation, and what side of the wall you're on, you might think it's wrong and outlandish to get the VIP treatment. But if you somehow ascend to that VIP class, your philosophy will likely change. Just admit it!

I don't believe human morals are so completely fungible that every single person would commit felonies after being elected to the Senate. I'm quite certain there are senators in Washington who have not accepted this kind of kickback.

Just watch a lot of media folks -- radio talk show hosts, TV pundits, and newspaper columnists -- decry these Washington insiders for getting the hookup, but if you get the truth from them, they'll have to confess that even they have received benefits by virtue of their "celebrity" status.

One last time: Getting VIP treatment as a private citizen is not a crime. Getting VIP treatment as a Senator isn't even a crime, until people start giving you free stuff. If Countrywide gave Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, and the entire Editorial staff of the New York Times discounted loans, it wouldn't be a crime (although it might get some of them in trouble with their employer). Receiving a discounted loan if you are Christopher Dodd, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, that is a crime.

So, before everyone goes off the deep end, just make sure you're not being a hypocrite and judging someone else for something you have accepted or would readily accept if you were also a VIP.

So if you received a free fruit basket once, or if you wish you had received a free fruit basket, don't you dare judge Senators for committing a crime. You're just as bad as they are.

Obama's Problem

While discussing Democrat candidates at a party some six months ago, I voiced the opinion that Barack Obama could have a problem because of his preacher and his separatist views. I say this not to show my clairvoyance. It wasn't an original thought of mine but one I saw somewhere on the Internet. I say this to note that I, some random person, knew that Barack Obama's preacher was spouting hateful rhetoric.

On Friday, after a firestorm began in the previous week, Barack Obama announced that he was unaware of any hateful speech for Rev. Wright until the beginning of his presidential campaign. I find the disingenuous. Barack Obama attending this church frequently, named one of his books "The Audacity of Hope" after a Wright sermon, but coincidentally never happened to be in attendance when Wright accused the US of creating the AIDS virus, implied the US deserved the 9/11 attacks, or said "God Damn America"; a convenient ignorance of the hateful views of the most important religious figure in his life? And even though this information was revealed, he still kept this man on his campaign in a minor role?

No matter vehemently he denounces the words of Wright, or racial intolerance in general, Obama stood by this man while it was politically expedient and a politician in Chicago. As watchers of politics we often imagine, what clever move a politician can make to get out of a sticky situation; Obama's flowery words on racial tolerance are his latest maneuver.

I don't believe that Obama agrees with the words of Reverend Wright. It's possible that he agreed with them more in the past, or sympathizes with the anger, but I don't think that Obama should be burdened with being a Black Separatist, or AIDS conspiracy nut or whatever else Wright has advocated. I do think he should be burdened with the fact the he tolerated this behavior, that he continued to attend and support a church which advocated for these things, and that he placed a person with these political views in an important place in his life.

Presidential Candidate Stack Ranking

Who I like most to least of all the real candidates, without considering electability:

Fred Thompson
Rudy Giuliani
Mitt Romney
John McCain
Ron Paul
Hillary Clinton
Mike Huckabee
Barack Obama
John Edwards

3D makes everything seem better

MOVIE REVIEW: Beowulf
King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) has a problem: The monster Grendel (Cripsin Glover) slaughters his citizens every time they try to have fun. Fortunately, the mighty Beowulf (Ray Winstone) heeds the call for heroes and proceeds to deal with Grendel and his crazy mom (Angelina Jolie). Based up the epic english poem.

I love 3D, and the 3D here is the best I have ever seen. The faces of the characters are remarkably realistic. Despite this technological wonder, I almost walked out of this film. Some people did walk out of the film, and I envied them. The film is grim, violent, and unpleasant. Grendel slaughters people graphically while screaming in pain. The first 2/3rds of the film embodies the worst of modern gore-porn horror. Only the final battle is well staged and consists of more action than blood. So if you can show up just for that scene, go right ahead.

The PG-13 rating is a complete joke. This should be rated R. The film us all computer animated and only shows the shadows of some of the most graphic acts, and I guess this allowed them to get away with a PG-13 rating, but it's far more violent than any Die Hard or Terminator. It's far more violent than Fight Club. I looked through my movie collection to find a film more violent than Beowulf, and I couldn't come up with an obvious answer. The Thing, maybe, has some more gratuitous scenes, although they don't drag on nearly as long as the bloodbaths in Beowulf.

Anyway, two stars, just but only if you can see it in 3D.

Gordon Freeman, Pit Diving Messiah

I recently played through Half-Life 2 again, thanks to the excellent Xbox 360 release of The Orange Box. In Half-Life 2, you play hero Gordon Freeman who has returned from whatever magical place he was hiding to help fight off the evil force of The Combine. In the time that Gordon as been sitting out on some other dimension, he's become a sort of Messianic figure, the last "Freeman". This despite the fact Gordon Freeman is a mute who only communicates through flipping switches and killing many, many people and creatures.

Why is it that sci-fi movie and game sequels so often require that the main character to be elevated to the status of Jesus Christ, Serial Killing Superstar? The Matrix, Oblivion, Chronicles of Riddick, Halo 3, The Passion of the Christ; all have Messianic heroes. Can't we have more John McClanes? The Wrong Guy in The Wrong Place at The Wrong Time (with excellent marksmanship)?

Despite the fact that everybody in Half-Life 2, hero or villain, swoons at the presence of Gordon Freeman, Gordon has only two attributes that make him a hero. First is the afformentioned Massive Killing Potential. Like many video game heroes, Gordon can carry more weapons and ammo than the laws of physics normally allow and switches between them very rapidly. As my friend Alec Muzzy has stated to me, you need to suspend disbelief and I do, mostly because I need all the guns and ammo to kill the hundreds of troops rushing at me.

Gordon's supreme skill, imbued to him by you, the player, is his extreme desire to jump into pits. If you or I saw a pit in real life which we could safely jump into put could not easily come back out of the same way, it is highly unlikely that we would jump into the pit. Gordon Freeman, on the other hand, must jump into pits. If you can jump in (without dying) and can't jump back out (and you haven't been there before), you no for certain that you must jump in. The lord god of the Half-Life universe has given his son Freeman a sign that this is the way to go.

Gordon wouldn't need to jump into so many pits if there was a straight path from point Alpha to point Lambda, unfortunately two things get in his way. The first is debris. Gordon's world is crumbling at a rapid pace and 9 out of 10 halways a blocked by colapsed roofs and piles of cars. If Gordon Freeman is very bad at climbing over piles of debris and climbing in general, so he'll have to find another way around.

The next problem is locked doors. Gordon's debris problems pale in comparison to his locked door problems. Most of the world's doors are locked, and Gordon has no ability to unlock a standard door. If the door uses a huge switch or giant crank he can deal, but the average door is a mystery that he's never worked out. Not only is unlocking a door out of Gordon's reach, but so knocking it down.

If only Gordon could knock down locked doors and walls he'd get around quick, but despite having a big crowbar, 5 guns, several grenades, a rocket launcher, and a weapon that bends the fabric of the universe Gordon can't seem to pass break down a single door. He's also positively stimied by fences and wire mesh security glass. A simple pair of wire cutters would save Gordon hours of running in circles.

Half-Life 2 is the ultimate in on-rails FPS. You're lead down a single fixed path and see all the same sequences everyone else sees. It's a great manufactured experience, but completely manufactured nontheless. In many ways it accomplishes what the Full Motion Video games of the early 90's wanted to to but couldn't: Place the player straight in the middle of a movie. It's pure thrill, like heroin (hey kids, use drugs!).

It's a great game, and the ultimate anti-game. Half-Life 2 lacks strategy, and long term choices. A choice you make will only effect your ammo supply and life totals until you die or until you reach another room full of ammo. Because of that I don't think it can ever occupy the same place in gamers hearts filled by open-ended games like GTA (and Bioshock to a lesser extent), MMOs, and any multiplayer game.