Tea | Christopher
Robin | Idealism | RPGs (Final Fantasy)
|My Morning Cup|
Whilst I probably
prefer coffee for my “morning cup” the fact of the matter is, at
least as far as the British are concerned, the ideal “morning cup”
is filled with tea. So, this morning, I grabbed by commemorative New
Orleans cup, filled it with filtered water, microwaved it for 2
minutes, dropped a Twinings Irish Breakfast tea bag inside, and let
it steep. 10 minutes and a teaspoon of sugar later and I'm quite
satisfied with today's wake up juice.
|Silly Old Bear|
Disney
has been planning a live action Winnie the Pooh for a few years now,
at least, it was originally announce in April of 2015. Many people
will read this and say, “Yes, another children's movie from Disney,
why do you care?” I'd like to start with, while the movie is
clearly going to appeal to children, because that probably will be
where much of its market value comes from, I believe the movie is
intended for adults.
First
of all, this isn't a Winnie the Pooh movie, it's Christopher
Robin, which
is set to be the story of Christopher Robin as an adult as he
struggles with a loss of imagination, and how some childhood friends
help him cope with this. Honestly, when I first heard this, I dreamt
with a—perhaps slightly demented—hopeful heart of a movie where
Christopher Robin was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and we got to see
Pooh and friends through the eyes of a sane on-looker, mere figments
of a grown man's overactive imagination. Admittedly, this is probably
going to sell more tickets than my adult-oriented Alice in
Wonderland-esque monsterpiece.
Isn't
this in truth something with which many adults struggle? I'm sure
most won't admit it, it's in fact part of the issue with adulthood.
We're told to crush our childhoods underfoot and join “the real
world” and get medical degrees and join a field over-saturated with
people who don't care about the work and who are just in it for the
money, in this world we'll grow old and miserly with everyone else
and the only things that will keep us rooted in our sanity are either
drink, drugs or family, eventually we'll lose our minds in most
unsettling fashions, ruin the world further, and leave that behind
for our children and grandchildren. Anyone who looks at “grown-up
life” like that is simply someone who hasn't “grown-up” yet,
anyone who would rather make a paltry living wage doing something
they enjoy and pursuing a dream simply doesn't realize how important
more money than you can hope to spend is, anyone
who prefers cartoons to war documentaries is clearly uneducated and
doesn't know a thing about the real world. It's hard for one side to
call out the other side and no 100% that they're justified, but
that's what we do.
I'm
reminded of my aunt again in this, much as I was previously with
Kingdom Hearts, while she is definitely an adult—she has children,
pays bills, lives in a house, works a full-time job, does extra work
related things—she is not one of these aforementioned “grown-ups.”
In fact, she may well be my inspiration in pursing my dreams and not
just getting a medical degree and hating myself for the rest of my
life. She's a high school math teacher, she'll never make so much
money she has no idea what to do with, but she pays the bills,
supports her lifestyle, is happily married, and pursues the things
she loves. Unlike Christopher Robin, who I believe has become one of
these “grown-ups,” my aunt is full of imaginative whimsy. She can
enjoy children's cartoons and video games because she doesn't conform
to some “adult” stereotype. That's very important to me I
suppose.
In
frankness, I'm not calling out the “grown-ups” of the world,
first, if that's your intention, it is also your prerogative. If you
see the world and its jobs as a means to make money, and see no point
in carrying on life without making money, I'm glad you're able to
pursue these modes of employment that put more cash in your pocket.
Similarly, there are those who adopted the “grown-up” mentality
because they fell into, between mistakes or happy accidents and the
crushing oppression of thousands of years of “this is how it is”
states of mind. If you are a “grown-up” because you have to be,
keep doing it, it's very important I have no doubt.
That
was quite the tangent, wasn't it? Maybe I should rename this section
“Silly Old Grown-ups.” I won't of course, that would just
be...silly. Aside from these ideas that this is an adult movie with a
children's movie gloss to make it appealing to the primary Disney
market, let's be real, this is part of my childhood. I grew up on
Winnie the Pooh, and
Tigger too. The
Hundred Acre Wood is my own childhood play place, and of course it is
further ingrained by its consistent appearances in the Kingdom Hearts
games. I am probably more excited for this movie as a part of my
childhood than I am for it as a representation of what I wish more
adults were like.
|The
Ridiculous Ideal|
Ironically,
the above was written in advance, the morning prior if you will, of
editing and publication date. So the before, also the after. But Mr.
Robin got me thinking, obviously about a foolish ideal, idyllic
worlds almost definitely can not exist.
One
reason I started working on Carpe Mane was that I recognized a
creative stint in my morning work. I wrote up a mad rant one morning
about the employment situation in America and it really got me
thinking, so I'm going to refer back to it a bit here. This was
originally an idealist's stream of consciousness, and obviously a lot
of it would not work with the systems we have in place, but arguably
its a model.
There
are three problems that are always talked about, sometimes as
non-issues, and sometimes as major issues. Well, maybe four, but the
fourth one could theoretically be resolved within these three topics:
over-population, unemployment, and under-education. The fourth is the
eventual destruction of Earth by its primary domineering
inhabitants—humans—but again, that one is even more questionable
than the others, and could be solved by the others.
I
forewarn you now, I am about to casually wander into socialistic and
communistic viewpoints without the slightest idea of what I'm talking
about, true capitalists beware.
I
ran the numbers, it was quick and simple, please pardon any
absurdities in math. There are approximately one million practicing
physicians in the United States, these start with family practices
and pediatricians as the lowest paid members of the doctoral medical
field. On average, the lower end of these professionals earn $184,000
per year, rounded down to the nearest thousand. The average monthly
expenses of a four person house-hold living in New York City is
$4,700, rounded up to the nearest hundred. This is $56,400 yearly to
support four people as an average New York family. This is of course
discounting the $3,600 for a supposedly low-end four bedroom
apartment, which would raise the actual cost of living to $8,300/mo.
or $99,600/yr. But, theoretically, the rent cost could be eliminated
from this equation through other, temporary, government funded
housing solutions.
Looking
at those expenses, $56,000 to live in reasonable comfort (the
estimate I looked at included 10% of meals being at restaurants,
weekly entertainment excursions, and “moderate” clothing and
shoes purchases) could be covered twice by a practicing pediatrician,
and they would still be left with a clearly very undesirable $71,200
in funding. On the other end
of this equation, according to a census in 2017, there are 554,000
homeless people in the United States. Those 554,000 people, divided
up into four person family units, would spend a total $13,794,600,000
living the average, reasonably comfortable New Yorker life (according
to certain estimates). If
all one million practicing physicians in the U.S. were pediatricians
averaging $184,000 per year, and
lived that exact same lifestyle (this is assuming they had no
additional income within a four-person household, and each physician
individually spent the $99,600 per year from their salary) they could
feed, clothe, and support the 554,000 homeless from the 2017 census
and still have $70,605,400,000 left in their conjoined pockets.
There
are so many problems with this equation that its not even funny, for
starters, why should these 554,000 homeless (who, regardless of their
actual situations, are viewed as lazy bums leaching off of society)
benefit from the hard work of medical professionals? Then, who is
paying for all of these doctors' educations? Information and years of
schooling aren't free. There's one other, very important question
here, why are these 554,000 people supposedly unemployed and
homeless, when there are 6.7 million unfilled job openings according
to an Economic News Release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
released on June 5, 2018.
A
small portion of the answer is insufficient education for many of
those seeking employment. Another small part of the problem no doubt
is the employers themselves declining to even look at the
applications of many would-be employees based on any number of
stereotypes.
The
aforementioned doctors might well be able to accomplish the support
of 554,000 homeless, if they weren't plagued by their own outstanding
bills, the educational costs of not only getting themselves through
medical school, but trying to make sure their children can get
through whatever schooling they want or
need as well. You can't
simply say, “Education should be free,” because then how do these
educators get paid. This is
where so many refuse to see the dark side of capitalism, the system
that supposedly benefits the hard working, crushes underfoot the poor
but capable. When you have to work a full-time job straight out of
high school to pay bills, you lose time to pursue an education, or
you may choose to lose yourself in favor of full-time school and
work. Then, when it can be so difficult to even obtain full-time
work, even if you were willing to lose a part of yourself in favor of
a brighter tomorrow, will you even have the opportunity? The 6.6
million people unemployed as of June according the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, in the face of 6.7 million jobs that they can not obtain,
would argue that no, many will not have that opportunity.
I
can't say whether socialism would be a good or a bad change for this
country. So many times have we seen socialism fail or corrupt until
it's a naughty word, tossed around like a rightfully used slur. In
the eyes of the past-centric baby-boomer, the forward-thinking
millenial is just another new-age slacker, so it's no surprise that I
innately think, as I write these words out, that many people will
claim I know nothing, while some others will rally behind the madness
of my drivel.
That's
all it is though, just ramblings, idealist non-sense. Even in the
ideal situation where we put 6.6 million people into most of those
unfilled 6.7 million jobs and the government funds it all in favor of
a brighter future and we get 554,000 homeless off the streets and we
stop charging an arm and a leg to learn how to cure illnesses,
creating a need to charge an arm and a leg to provide said cures,
then what? Then we have all these past generations, these people
already in these high cost to enter fields, who spent their lives
paying bills, who would then look at the next generation as nothing
but undeserving slackers.
“From
each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” I
think I read that off a Wheaties box. -Unknowing Communist
Propagandist
|The
Progression Problem|
As
long as we're talking about ideals, we may as well look at my
favorite genre of ideals, video game ideals. Over the last six months
I've been playing the original Final Fantasy games, I've finished
Final Fantasy 1 and 2 and have just started on 3 last week. Ideally,
by the end of the year, I'll have completed Final Fantasy 3 at least
and be on to the Super Nintendo line of games next. But, that's not
the ideal I'm talking about.
Final
Fantasy has a problem that should be corrected, in a perfect world,
the random encounters, the minions of the various bosses, feel
important to a degree, but then they fall to the wayside. During my
play-throughs of Final Fantasy 1 and 2, I found quite the opposite
revelation. The thousands of random enemies strewn about boss
dungeons were forever troublesome, with little means to deal with
them all except for escaping, and in the second installment escape
seemed to be a very rare treat.
Meanwhile,
once I had run from or mass murdered my way through all of the
goblins, cockatrices and evil wizards between my party and the
dungeon bosses, I would often find that the bosses themselves
were...lacking. Many boss fights would end in two turns, less than
most random encounters, and these bosses would present no meaningful
abilities except for instant KO moves, which feel like a copout in
the first place, especially when you consider that every group of
Cockatrice has the same one-hit one-kill ability.
I
suspect that it is extremely difficult to strike a fair balance
between meaningful random encounters and powerful bosses. Quest 64
came close, until you reached the point that you could make yourself
immune to damage every other turn. The random encounters in Quest 64
aren't quite as threatening as a slough of cockatrices or basilisks,
but the creatures were basically the only means of advancing your
elemental prowess, and sometimes they could become quite dangerous.
The fact that you could simply walk away from every encounter without
a care in the world was a bit troublesome. The bosses in Quest 64 on
the other hand, prior to mastering the Earth element and gaining
immunity to magic, could be quite powerful. These monstrous men and
women wield that have near 100% chances to hit and dish out a quarter
or so of the main character's health with each blow, combined with
health bars that normally were eight times the size of the hero's, or
more, and the fact that the most powerful Earth spell was 100% random
in its accuracy, the bosses in Quest 64 could be overbearing, not
just hard.
Overtime
I think that Final Fantasy has both rectified the boss to minion
ratio, and possibly nullified it further. For instance, with the HD
re-release of Final Fantasy X and X-2, players gained the ability to
have random encounters occur never, or every other step. Making early
game grinding incredibly simple, and those long treks to bosses
cakewalks.
|TTFN|
That's
it for my idealistic rambling today, we started out soft with a cup
of tea, hit hard evolving from sacrificed childhood whimsy to
ridiculous employment rates, and finally mellowed back out with some
idle chatter about role-playing games. I for one am excited to see
where we'll go tomorrow.
Until
then, TTFN.
C.W.
Sherman
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