Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!

Those that know me know that I have, to say the least, quite a problem with authority.

So when I read about an Internet group of hackers/anarchists known as Anonymous that hacked Gene Simmons's web page after he publicly announced that he endorses laws that bankrupt anyone that shares files that he doesn't want them sharing, guess whose side I took?

But that wasn't anything compared to his even more childish response. He called for their arrest and wished rape upon them.

A month or so later, everyone found out about the web site WikiLeaks, which reveals the truly corrupt practices of governments around the world. Soon after, its founder, Julian Assange, was arrested. (Wonder why that happened). Luckily, though, the web site is still going, owing to its decentralised nature. Torrent sites keep going, because they are decentralised.

Anonymous is best described as a group that punishes unethical behaviour by governments and corporations - essentially, it punishes abuse of power. In my home country of South Africa, the government is attempting to censor media it doesn't like and it wants to implement a bill allowing it to torture journalists for 25 years for saying things they don't like. This, of course, is entirely against the constitution of the country, but since when has the government had any regard for its own laws?

And then there's the movie V for Vendetta, the hero of which is an anarchist fighting a futuristic British government eerily reminiscent of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. This character, V, wears a Guy Fawkes mask and his image has become associated with anarchists around the world.

 As such, the group Anonymous (which, naturally, is decentralised, and essentially lacks a leader) uses the image and the mask to simultaneously identify with Anonymous yet be, well, anonymous.

About 3 months ago, Anonymous uploaded a video to Youtube about South Africa and its current situation. People need to be aware of this, so I have posted the video here. Watch it.

People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53tCd4jusxo

If you can't watch the video, below is a transcript of it.

To the people of South Africa:  Anonymous would like to address you on the state of your society.

The people of South Africa today are suffering from mass poverty and South Africa has one of the widest gaps between rich and poor in the world. South Africa's resources, diamonds, coal and others go to America and Europe. Instead of the people enjoying the wealth of the country, big corporations like Anglo-American and small families like the Oppenheimers in fact own all the resources while parents and children suffer day in and day out with no end in sight. South Africa has the highest statistics of violence in the world with 18000 murders committed every year, 2 thousand of  them innocent children. More South Africans have been murdered in the last 6 years than the number killed in the war in Iraq over the same period. Your daughters and women are falling prey to drugs and are leaving their homes into organised gangs while the police are rendered impotent by the very laws that govern South Africa. Throughout all of this Jacob Zuma and the rest of the government are telling the world that South Africa is a rainbow democracy. How long will the people of South Africa allow this to go on? How long will you be prisoners in your own country? How long will you suffer from banks and corporations in your own country? The winds of change are blowing over Mother Earth and the time is now to take a stand against the government because they have lost all legitimacy the day the first child was killed under their watch. They have lost all legitimacy the day the first mother died because she could not afford hospital fees  or transport costs to get there. They have lost all legitimacy the day the first child was lost to drugs.

Bravery is contagious. So, people of South Africa, so stand up now and show the world that enough is enough. This year, take to the streets, all for one and one for all. Take back your country. We are Anonymous and we support you. We are black and we are white. We are coloured and we are Indian. We are young and we are old. To Jacob Zuma we say: We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget.

Learning to think objectively

This is a post I've been promising I'd make lately. I've needed a few days to think this through, mostly because it deals with the ever-so-misunderstood concept of female sexuality.

Yes, yes. I'm a man. Don't give me crap, for this is EXACTLY the kind of thing an outsider needs to say. So stick by me for this and then yell at me afterward.

In the early days, people tended to be conservative as a whole. They considered things like sex and nudity taboo or profane, in oppositon to religiously acceptable behaviours, which were considered sacred. This meant that, publicly at least, both men and women would restrict and censor all things related to sex, while trying to cultivate an image of the ideal person as monogamous, faithful and religious. Sex was somthing to be delayed until marriage. Some men, who were nothing less than complete assholes, realised they could abuse and dominate women more if they restricted the womens' sexuality a bit more than their own. Then they could get all the sex they needed from their harem, while raising a society in which boys learned to relate all women to sexless mother figures (think of the image of a nun in a Catholic school), and girls were taught to think of all men as potentially violent sexual predators. In this absolutely dystopian vision, men would always have to be the sexual 'agressors' or dominant partners, and women would fiercely reject any man that didn't fit their ideal image given to them by the media, as it was socially acceptable to limit them to only one partner.

Of course, not everyone bought this patriarchal crap, least of all women. Many women essentially formed two groups, one no more than a caricature of the other. Unfortunately, they both went by the name 'feminists'. One group is legitimately concerned with the civil rights of women. The other is essentially a vengeful backlash against a group of sexist men, so a group of sexist women. Sadly, this group has gotten plenty of media attention. Think Disney cartoons, and the Lifetime channel. This group is just as conservative as the old patriarchal assholes. They want to suppress all sexuality, male and female. They run abstinence-only groups and teach that abortions are evil. And they do it all in the name of feminism. Quite simply, fuck all of you.

This is where I come in, and agree with the group of women that ARE concerned with civil rights, along with men who believe in these things also. I (and others) advocate a sex-positive society, that is equally accepting of both male and female sexuality. I know men that actually believe that any and all of their sexual advances are unwelcome just because they are men and their sexuality is worth 'less' than women's.

Don't believe me? Watch ANY average 'teenage' comedy about sex in the last twenty years. 99 times out of 100, it will be the GUY on a mission to get laid, with the GIRL's validation as all-important. The guys are portrayed as lecherous perverts (for JUST wanting to get laid, their characters were ripped apart, for this TERRIBLE CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY) and girls were shown as chaste and heroic for not having sex. Can you see that this is retarded? For guys that aren't born with a menagerie of social skills, we need the media to teach us things. We watch and we learn that we are evil just for having sexual desires, and that any guy that gets laid has 'gotten lucky', rather than, perhaps, just for once, being an object of a female's desire?

Above all else: Women like sex just as much as men, they just won't openly admit to it. Several studies have been done showing this to be true. And why is this? Because the conservative media has taught them to be this way. What's that you say, I'm crazy, women really ARE chaste and well-behaved? Well, why not take a link to the site http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/. My internet addiction has led me to a site where people post funny text messages they receive that tell stories about their lives. Read a few pages. Now think back to teen comedies and the guys talking about pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy, tits, tits, tits. Now go back on the site. Does it look like a bunch of horny guys? Not to me. I find far more references, in fact, to the sexual 'objectification' of men.

Rock on! I know I've said this before, but BOTH sexes need to be objectified. Because when that happens, sexism will become the joke it deserves to be, rather than anything serious. And then we can approach something of a sex-positive society.

Now go out and get laid. You might just (both) enjoy it.

Gaming personalities

I tend to regard myself above pop psychology at most times. So I shall make a very clear statement here right from the start: THIS POST IS NOT MEANT AS A SERIOUS PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILING TECHNIQUE. It's simply an observation I've made with myself, and others can feel free to add their own anecdotes here.

So, I was wondering about the correlation between your preferred gaming style and the way you interact with others. I've been a gamer since I was very young, and a lanner since I was 14. Some of my favourite games to play with friends include Counter-Strike, Warcraft 3 and Dota. I shall discuss each section below.


Counter-Strike
My favourite gun in CS was always the AWP/Magnum. I envied my friend Lee, because he could always kill people very quickly in CS with the AWP (one bullet meant a kill if you hit in the chest, stomach or head) and would tend to survive most rounds as a result. He didn't really have to go out looking for you, either. He knew where you were coming and would just wait for you. For other shooters, quite simply, a sniper class. He's a player that doesn't tend to get shot a lot. He won't have the most kills, but he'll probably have the fewest deaths.

However, another friend I know had his favourite gun as the AK47. I won't mention his name, but he had plenty of anger issues (defeat for him would often mean keyboard-bashing of epic proportions). He always said he liked the assult rifle with the highest damage. He would come out, fight and gun everybody down.

Warcraft 3
I can probably go more into personality here, since there are not that many varying playstyles. I don't think it makes any difference whether you prefer a ranged or melee army, nor much which race you pick (as the four races can all do completely different things with quite a variety of units. Orcs were the go-to for melee and night elf for ranged, but as it is a third-person view, using melee fighters is no more 'involved' than ranged.

However, think about the difference between THESE two: Turtling vs. Rushing. Rushing involved early and repeated attacks on your enemy's base. This would wear both you and your enemy(ies) down. Turtling, by contrast, was stacking your base full of defences, saving resources and teching to the highest level. Warcraft 3, along with many strategy games, probably to discourage turtling, would give players units like Heroes, in order to get them to fight more. Despite this, I was always more of a turtler than a rusher. I felt that walking armies across a map to fight your enemies, only to meet another waiting army plus defences, all while leaving your own base exposed was not worth it. I always seemed to have this belief in my head that the game's strongest units were put there for a good reason, and no decent army would begin a battle without them there.

I wonder if this in some way could be related to my rather passive outlook on life and general dislike of combat (turtling would minimise combat by having one intense battle at the end, which would usually be quite one-sided). I may be argumentative, but I hate physical combat in most forms. For me, if I lived in the Warcraft universe and could build an army and a base, my natural response would be to fortify my base to such an extent that it wouldn't be worth anyone's while to attack it. Then while the other forces beat on each other, I would simply tech up and mop up the remaining enemy forces at opportune times. I wonder what that says about me as a person.

 Dota
 When it comes to player classes in Dota, things are a little more complicated. One can call the various possibilites of player class in Dota the following: support, carry, tank and assassin. Most people would think Carry would be the most fun class to play. They would probably be right - when you do well as a carry hero, you are unstoppable. But it is also the most risky class. A carry hero must have a good early-game as they tend to be very item-dependent. Assassin heroes generally run around getting sneaky kills and try not to die. They are what is generally needed to counter enemy carry heroes. Support is pretty self-explanatory, and so is tanking. I could generally enjoy carry or assassin heroes, but the role I always performed best in was tanking. As a tank hero, your job was to start fights and absorb the damage while your team killed the enemies. Your reward was that you would get to stay alive when they would often die. Since there is no avoiding battles in Dota, again, tank was probably my most appropriate role. Think about it - a passive player whose main job is to stay alive, someone who often gets to tech to good items because he doesnt't lose gold often - sounds like my ideal role.

In that vein, maybe what I should do in life is develop a tough exterior, so that I can reach my dreams and goals. But conversely, I always did value my sensitivity as a positive point. Perhaps I can do both, somehow. I just find it interesting that coumputer games may give you an opportunity to learn about roles of 'playing' life, as it were.

There's no business like show-business

Or so the saying goes.

Today, an interesting thing happened. My film class, as a whole, is interested in doing internships and expanding our careers in film, as that is what is necessary to be a successful filmmaker in Cape Town (or anywhere, really).

Our class got into contact with CTV (Cape Town Community Television, see http://www.capetowntv.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_TV ) and upon the arrival of 6-7 of us, we were all presented with several opportunities. I shall update as I get more information, but this is what is on the cards:

Participation community shows - finding people's heroes and interviewing them
An education show
Half-hour episodes of talk shows with us as students
Editing several projects sent in
Screenings of documentaries that the class, and others, have made

All of this should, in the next 1-4 months (depending on how they all progress separately) be aired on CTV at some point. CTV relies on money from the government and is a non-profit organisation, so they cannot match the broadcast standards of commercial television, but with the influence of several soon-to-be UCT graduates involved, we shall try and produce high-quality programming (or as high-quality as 4:3 is ever going to get). I think we can have a positive influence on the place.

So if anyone is interested in watching these shows or many of CTV's other offerings, point your aerial towards Tygerberg Hill (that large mountain-like thing near Durbanville) and CTV is between ETV and SABCV on the UHF band.

I am greatly looking forward to the opportunity to do some work, have my films shown and attempt to benefit the community, in the unusual ways that I do things like this. The station's people that I have met before seem very open-minded and accepting of change, progress, new ideas.

This has always been an important thing to me: willingness to accept dynamism and flux in life. As Ferris Beuller famously said: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it".