Something Wicked In Your Peripheral Vision…

[paisley]

cool article by another good guest-blogger on boing boing

by John Shirley

SOMETHING WICKED IN YOUR PERIPHERAL VISION…

Crack? Crack is nothing. CALL OF DUTY and MEDAL OF HONOR multiplayer—for a guy like me, just a notch above hunter-gatherer, that's a wire right into my backbrain. KEEP those games AWAY FROM ME! If I fall into a game the next thing I know I'm two years older. Dealers of CoD and MoH should be given harsh, harsh sentences. (When is Doom III finally going to come out? And Half-Life II? WHen are the Doom III makers going to stop fibbing about when it's coming out?) Yeah I know, there are different kinds of basic personalities which find expression, amongst other ways, in which kind of escapism they gravitate toward; which kinds of roles they prefer to play. Which role, and which consensus-imagined triumph, releases Adrenicortitrophic Hormone, cocktailed with endorphins, for that addictive cycle of input, pleasure release, output; input, pleasure release, output—for some people it's EVERQUEST, aka EVERCRACK. A friend up in Oregon had a lady stay at her house in a spare room. She was going to get a job, start paying rent. She never did. She just played EVERQUEST all the damn day long. Her hair got dirty, ratty; she forgot to change her tampon. They had to throw her out. Don't tell me that this stuff isn't addictive. I'm not saying PC and videogames are Evil and they make people Do Bad Things. Never mind that a gang of murderous lunatics in Oakland –who killed a lot of people last year— genuinely liked to play Grand Theft Auto before going out on their robbery/murder sprees because they said it got them "juiced up." They were already psychos, I'm sure. But it's also true that a lot of these games become sandboxes for some people's worst impulses; conceivably, if you're twisted, it sort of brings that twist a little more into focus, or helps fix it in place.

The weird thing about CoD multiplayer is that some guys who choose to be on the AXIS team, their little personal bot wearing Nazi uniforms as they hunt you down and shoot you, are-–according to the little messages they type in the message area by the gamescreen—ACTUAL Nazis. Racists, anyway. Quite a number of them, I noted, while still in the throes of my addiction (I'm currently in recovery from fps PC gaming but expect to relapse to single-player mode when DOOM III comes out) typed out little neonazi messages that they were gonna kill "fags" and "Jews" and "niggers". These guys—-this really is going to surprise you—-were usually from the Deep South. Alabama and SC and so on. I know, hard to believe they could be from there.

I mean, the majority of multiplayer first-person-shooter players do not babble racist horsecrap online. But it's pretty common to encounter it there. Some of these crackers, so to speak, seem to feel that anything goes in multiplayer games (unless the specific server forbids it). Also it gave me a chill when players actually in Germany chose to play on the Axis team –every time—and talked to one another in German. They're Germans pretending to be Nazis killing Americans: killing me. And they're damned good at it too.

Mostly the problem is that I'm not a "normie". I'm an addict type. I've been addicted to cocaine, in the past. And I just tend to get addicted to things. A "normie", as they say in certain 12-step groups, can do a line or two of cocaine and not spend the next three days getting more and more...and more. A normie can drink two shots of vodka and stop right there, no problem. Addict types can't. Anyone can be addicted to anything addictive—but normies take longer to become addicted and have a better shot of avoiding addiction altogether. Some people have to be practically pushed over that cliff. Others, like me, see the cliff and sprint toward the edge. It's a brain-wiring thing

Here's more addiction lore: some people are naturally uppers addicts—cocaine, speed—some people are downers types. Heroin, reds. Some have been addicted to both uppers and downers, but everyone tends, generally, to prefer one or the other. Maybe heroin people are more likely to be Everquest junkies, and cocaine people are more likely to be Call of Duty crackheads.

We're "helping" the people of Columbia by dropping incredibly toxic materials on their land to destroy cocaine crops; but NPR reports that farmers in Columbia are saying that this powerful "agent orange" type material (not exactly the same as AO), naturally kills EVERY plant. It's not selective. It stays in the soil. Kill the coca plants but try to raise something else in that spot afterwards—if it grows at all it's pervaded with poison. What idiot did not realize this would happen? They probably did and didn't care because it was about scoring points in the "war on drugs", no matter who gets hurt. I was just kidding about fps games being worse than crack--I have seen nightmarish things unfold in the wake of cocaine and amphetamines. People should not take them. Cocaine should not be colloquially called "blow"—it should be called Instant Asshole. Because that's what happens when you do even a line or two. I've never seen anyone improved by cocaine except in their own clouded minds. But there has to be a better way to make war on it than poisoning the land in Columbia for generations of farmers…

Back to cosmetic surgery briefly. I had this vision of a scene: Mommy comes home from the plastic surgeon after the bandages are off. Before the kids see her, husband tells her two children, "Mommy's coming in and…there's nothing we can do now. Say how pretty she is!" The small kids see Mommy's new, permanent rictus; her hideous clownlike plasticized weirdly glossy face. One of them manages a trembling smile. The other kid bolts. Daddy says "Now Britesha…come back, you're hurting Mommy's feelings." "That's not my Mommy. It's an ugly scary doll-face like I had in my nightmares!" "Pretend she's pretty, Britesha. Believe it or not, she thinks she's prettier that way. Just pretend--for her sake…" "Okay. But Daddy—please don't let it touch me!"

And check out these scaryphotosof celebs on "surgery crack".

More, later tonight—my wife is making me go see HENRY THE IV, three hours of Shakespeare. Since I'm literate, I'm really looking forward to three hours of Shakespeare tonight. No. I am. What? WHAT? I AM.

Oh God. Three hours….

Among legendary author John Shirley's most recent novels are Demons and Crawlers, both from Del Rey books. He wrote the cyberpunk novels City Come A-Walkin' and the Eclipse trilogy (now out from Babbage Press). His first non-fiction book is Gurdjieff: An Introduction to his Life and Ideas from Tarcher/Penguin. He was also co-screenwriter of THE CROW. He won the Bram Stoker award for his story collection BLACK BUTTERFLIES (Leisure Books). His blog is at johnshirley.net .