Video Games and the Female Audience

Saw this on Sexy Videogameland, and the video is absolutely true. I don’t discuss games with my female friends, at all. While some of them do play casual games, we don’t sit around and discuss farm sim strategies. But I have, on numerous occasions, borrowed consoles / swapped games / argued over Call of Duty tactics with my male friends, all of whom are hardcore gamers.

It’s a wonder girls want to hang out with me at all. Hmm, come to think of it, that’s probably why they don’t.

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In other news, it’s exactly two months before I fly off – I am unprepared. Don’t panic. Press big button.

Happy birthday, Joon Guillen

I have written enough sap about my best friend to pierce his cold and composed heart, so I’m not even going to bother trying again. Instead, here are pictures. (Click on links below for individual photos.)

1. Mr. JiL – Joon (and Snowy), 2. Me and Joon, 3. Dreams Systems shoot – The DP, 4. Fartass, circa 2002, 5. Joon and Statue, 6. Joon, 7. Joon, 8. Glum, 9. Me and Joon

Happy birthday, assfart! I miss you! Come back to Manila already!

Kids these days

Dad came home yesterday with this story from his Speculative Fiction class (lit majors, in their junior year).

A student was in front, assigned to report about the film The Matrix.

Reporter (asking class): “How many of you have seen The Matrix?“

(Two students in class raise their hands.)

Reporter: “How old were you when you saw it?”

Two students: “9 years old.”

Reporter: “Did you understand it?”

Two students: “No.”

Reporter: “Neither did I.”

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It is a pity that our future leaders have never seen one of the defining films of my generation. Then again, that’s probably what our parents say about us, too.

(Incidentally, I am a huge fan of The Matrix, and we even made a fan film for it, which I just found online now. There was also cosplaying involved, and some sort of swordfighting, though thankfully there are no records of those.)

Historical quotes and translations

One of the things I love about being a game designer is I get paid to research and learn the coolest, funniest things.

Today’s historical fact, found in my random reading:

The mantelpiece commemorates the marriage in 1510 between SirJohn Campbell of Argyll and Muriel Calder of Cawdor. The allegorical design and the inscription in dog Latin have never been satisfactorily explained or translated, all of which is highly satisfactory. The writing may mean ‘In the morning, remember your creators’. Or it may mean something quite else, like ‘If you stay too long in the evening, you will remember it in the morning‘.

If you are into this kind of thing, the English translation of Lorem ipsum is actually quite wonderful.

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

With all the crap that fills up the Verse, I’m always pleased to find these little gems.

The HPV vaccine: a warning

I had my first HPV vaccine shot two weeks ago. The vaccine prevents you from getting some strains of the human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer. I took the UK brand Cervarix, which is P3,000 per shot at Asian Hospital.

While I’m not a fan of needles, I tolerate them pretty well, and all this year I’ve been having shots (for Hepa B and flu) so I wasn’t scared of it. When I asked my doctor about the HPV vaccine, she said there would be no complications or side effects, and it would hurt only as much as any regular shot.

Not true.

A regular shot (let’s say a flu shot) hurts for a few seconds, and then the day after there’s a small bruise where the needle went in. It’s no big deal – in fact, I usually forget that I had a shot and wonder why my arm was slightly sore.

The HPV shot fucking hurts. I had my HPV shot at 4pm on a Thursday. At 7pm, I could no longer move my right arm – the pain was intense, and all over my arm, enough for me to beg off work that night because I couldn’t type. I woke up the next day only to find that the pain had gotten worse. I couldn’t move my right arm without wincing. It hurt for four days. At the worst points, a wrong move could lead me to tears. My right arm also LOOKED bruised – there was a big splotch of darkness on my upper arm, like I had been beaten up. And really, that’s what it felt like. I’m no wuss, so believe me when I say that if it hurts enough to make me miserable, it really does fucking hurt.

At first I was worried – what on earth had I done to myself? But when I looked it up on the Web, I found that many women around the world had the same complaint. One woman whose pain tolerance was really high (she had tattoos on her chest) actually screamed in pain when the shot went in. Another brand of vaccine, Gardasil, causes fainting in young girls right after the shot. And a lot of us had the same debilitating pain that prevented us from working, driving, or doing anything else. I found out later that my friend’s aunt couldn’t shower or change clothes properly for two days because of the pain. Wikipedia mentions that the pain from Cervarix usually lasts 3.3 days on average.

If I had known this ahead of time, I’d have planned for it – I’d take the vaccine on a weekend or just before, so I could just stay home and rest. Next time, I plan to do just that, and will also have it done on my left arm instead of my right. I’ve got two shots to go, but at least I’m prepared now. What bothers me is that so few women in the Philippines have taken the HPV vaccine, so this pain isn’t common knowledge. (Aside from my friend’s aunt, I know nobody else who has taken this shot – probably because of the cost.)

Don’t get me wrong, I still recommend the HPV vaccine to all women (26 years old and below). A few days of pain wins over a lifetime of cancer. But I’m warning you – it hurts. Big time. (If it doesn’t hurt for you, well, lucky you.)

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PS I’d have taken a pic of my bruised arm, except I didn’t want it to become one of those gross medical photos on Wikipedia.