My Conversation with Death

Death, in itself, is nothing; but we fear,

To be we know not what, we know not where.

JOHN DRYDEN, Aureng-Zebe

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Death is coming for you.  Every single moment that passes by brings you one moment closer to the end of your existence on this planet. 

Death is something that’s on my mind very often.  Not in a morbid and creepy way where I linger on it unhealthily, but I think about it nevertheless.  Death is the one thing that awaits all of us.  No matter what course your life takes, one day you're body will cease to function and your brain will shut off and the person that you currently are will never exist in this time and place again.  Death used to scare me a lot.  Not only did I feel that I had so much left to do and so many things yet to experience, but I was afraid of the millions of horrible ways in which one could die.  Will the trigger that shuts down my body be a knife to an artery?  The pavement to my skull?  A cancer in my blood? A defect in my heart?  A long drawn out battle with leukemia?  That part of death still frightens me.  But I suppose the manner in which you die has more to do with life than it does death.

I don't think people talk about death nearly enough.  Sometimes it almost seems to me that everything we do is some inane subconscious distraction from the fact that we’re all going to die one day – some of us screaming.  It seems that because death is a universal given, we don't have to worry about it much.  Yet.  Because I'm at a point where I'm okay with the idea of my own death and I've come to peace with it, I feel like I need to get my thoughts about the grim reaper off my chest and talk about some of the post-life possibilities that are on the table.  So let's talk death.

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The first thing about the end of your life to be accepted is that what happens to consciousness after death is a giant question mark.  You can have your own pet hypothesis about what happens after death, but at the end of the day, you really have no clue what awaits us.  If you think you know with absolute certainty what happens to your consciousness after you die, let me rob you of that illusion because you're full of shit.  In order to talk about death in an honest way, you have to accept the fact that we all really have no clue how the hell this universe works.  We have 11 dimensions that run alongside our own.  Reality is a series of vibrations on the subatomic level and there is quite possibly an infinite amount of universes deep down in every atom, and an infinite amount of universes in a sea of infinite universes that form the atom of a larger universe, infinitely upward forever.  We know some very rudimentary laws of how some of the universe operates.  But we really have no clue what all of this is.  And we definitely don't know what happens to us after we die. The universe, as we discover, keeps getting stranger and stranger than our wildest dreams and mythologies can even begin to approach. The sooner you can let go of this false sense of post-mortem certainty, the sooner we can deal with our own mortality in a realistic and more fulfilling way.

Since dying is like being led to a black hole and getting pushed through and we have absolutely no idea what's on the other side, I'm going to let my imagination take over and run through some possibilities and flights of fancy inspired by scientific, religious, and philosophical ideas, as well as just stupid crap that came out of my head.

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Nothing happens.  In this possible scenario, after death the consciousness that is me, you, and every Homo sapien that has ever lived experiences nothing.  The hunk of living tissue that was our brains shuts off and chemical reactions stop.  Your physical body decays, and the consciousness that was once you experiences nothing forever and ever.  I think this scenario is the most likely considering that everything we know about consciousness stems from the physical matter that is our brains, and at this point in time, there's no concrete evidence to suggest otherwise.  But once again, we know next to nothing about the big questions of the multiverse, so we don't know for certain.  Another possibility…

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Theoretical physics postulates that the universe that we know is only one in an infinite sea of universes.  In this sea of infinite universes, there is a one where every single eventuality here on earth is realized.  There's a universe out there where everything is the same, and you're wearing a red shirt instead of a blue.  There's a universe where you're married to Elvis Presley, where the Nazis won WWII, where you don't exist, and instead one of your siblings is living your life, ad infinitum.  Physicists say this theory eliminates time travel paradoxes.  If you were to travel to the past, you'd be traveling to the past of one of these other parallel universes, affecting their timeline and not this one, as nature doesn’t allow time paradoxes.

What if when you die, you're jacked out of this universe and placed into one of these other universes and you get to live your life over again, with no previous memory of the life you lived in this universe?  Perhaps in this new universe, situations arise that are very similar to your experiences in your previous incarnation, and this is the deja vu phenomenon.

Maybe you don't even come back as yourself, but as another person?

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DMT, short for Dimethyltryptamine, is a psychedelic drug that's found in all plants and mammals, including humans.  As we’ve begun to study DMT and its effects, we're discovering that its release in our brain plays a part in nocturnal dreams, religious experiences, near death experiences, and meditation highs.  People who are given concentrated doses of the drug all report going through a similar experience.  

They describe leaving their body and seeing it tethered by a cord of light below them as they begin to float higher and higher until they are above the earth.  As they float through the cosmos, they hear soaring ethereal symphonies that swell into storming seas and they begin to see things which they have a hard time describing. Fractals of light fly past them as they see stars and nebulae and neutron star explosions.  They begin to pass through tunnels of light, and they report seeing ethereal otherworldly creatures sometimes appearing as reptiles or “mechanical elves” that impart to them wisdom.  These very same incorporeal cosmic entities are reported by many cultures across history who have experimented with the drug.

Terrence McKenna, a philosopher, psychonaut, research, teacher, lecturer and writer, famously recounts his own personal meetings with these entities:

“There's a whole bunch of entities waiting on the other side, saying "How wonderful that you're here! You come so rarely! We're so delighted to see you!"

They're like jewelled self-dribbling basketballs and there are many of them and they come pounding toward you and they will stop in front of you and vibrate, but then they do a very disconcerting thing, which is they jump into your body and then they jump back out again and the whole thing is going on in a high-speed mode where you're being presented with thousands of details per second and you can't get a hold on [them ...] and these things are saying "Don't give in to astonishment", which is exactly what you want to do. You want to go nuts with how crazy this is, and they say "Don't do that. Pay attention to what we're doing".

Eventually, the user gets sucked back through this journey and ends up back in their body once more.  Some subjects have said that they literally lived a thousand years during the course of their 5-15 minute trip.  Long term studies of these subjects have shown positive changes in the personality of the user.  They’re more open-minded, more positive, more loving, and more accepting.  All of them said that the DMT trip solidified within them a sense of oneness with the world and people around them.  There are no negative physical side-effects such as addiction or nerve damage that come with DMT usage.

Most of these subjects report that reality feels very slippery when they return from this DMT trip.  They describe this life as if it's the illusion, and what DMT did for them was to show "reality" for what it was - a counterfeit.  DMT peeled this falsehood away, and for the first time they were swept into the true reality for the first time.  Maybe there is no death.  Perhaps when we die, we see reality as it is for the first time.  The reality that DMT takers claim that they've seen.

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Perhaps before we're born, what is now our consciousness existed in a vast cosmic pool of consciousness.  For the sake of simplicity, let's say that this pool consists of what we call souls.  When you're conceived and your brain begins to develop inside of your mother's womb, your brain becomes attached to one of these souls that exists in this "ocean of consciousness".  So the physical brain that you have in your body acts as some sort of antennae so to speak.  Maybe every soul drawn from this pool of consciousness is the same.  You’re the same.  I’m the same.  We’re all one person made of the same soul stuff; the same fabric. 

But once this soul becomes attached to our brains and inhabits flesh, biology begins to edit the properties of this blank slate soul and is further molded by our experiences making us unique and different from one another.  But at the core, at the root, we’re still one. 

From science, we know that if you damage specific parts of the human brain, your personality can change and specific functions cease.  Specific functions can be mapped to different parts of your brain; or in this scenario, specific parts of your "brain antennae".  When your frontal lobe is damaged, for example, we know that a person shows decreased aggression and is more placid.  Maybe when this part of your brain antennae gets damaged, it's unable to receive signals from your soul.  Once you die and your antenna is destroyed, your soul continues to exist in this pool of consciousness.  You still have experiences, but they're nothing even remotely like what you experienced while on earth.  You've returned to the center of the multiverse, and are one with everything and everyone once more, forever and ever and ever.

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The previous scenario was very hippie and Buddha-ish, what with dying and becoming one with the universe and all.  Let's explore a darker possibility.  Before I saw The Matrix back in 1999, I think I took all of my experiences at face value.  What I saw is what existed and reality had no hidden doors.  Everything is what I perceive it to be.  But what if we're all experiencing some sort of advanced simulation designed for us by some sort of alien creatures?  What if this world and everything that we know to be true is really an illusion, a computer simulation designed for us by some super advanced alien civilization that we can't even begin to comprehend?  What if the laws of this universe are so different from ours that our minds can't even comprehend it?  What if the beings that are truly us that exist outside of the simulation are nothing like us at all?  Our consciousness is plugged into this humanity simulation, and once we die, we wake up into this new universe where we're questioned about our experiences here.  It's possible.

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You face your creator, like the western monotheists say you will.  The God of the Abrahamic faiths, inconsistently represented by monotheists, exists in some shape or form.  You die and meet this creator face to face and he condemns you to hell or elevates you to heaven based on whether you lived a good life or not or whether you accepted his son Jesus Christ or whether you acknowledged Mohammed as his prophet.  You then go on to live in heaven where you are obliged to worship this creator for all of eternity in what is described as paradise, or to hell where you are tortured by both physical torments and eternal separation from your creator.  I find this scenario to be very improbable - but you never know.  It could happen.

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Your consciousness is recycled and you're reincarnated based on your deeds in this life.  If you do good, you emerge from death in a new vessel, perhaps as a newborn Homo sapien.  There are strange stories of children being able to recall, in vivid and specific detail, memories from past lives; details that would have been very difficult for them to have come across otherwise.  Perhaps those unfortunate people who have lived this life as complete douchebags are recycled as lower life forms and are reincarnated as a common house cat or a rodent and those of us who live more constructive lives are again reincarnated as human or possibly as a higher being.

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Perhaps once you're free from the confines of this body, you exist as a free roaming spirit.  No longer contained by the confines of this meat prison, you're able to soar through the cosmos and go any place you like.  You can fly through our solar system, out across the Milky Way, and on and on into the universe to discover it's truths and secrets.  Many supernatural enthusiasts and "ghost hunters" who are into supernatural phenomenon such as ghosts often report they often come across souls that are trapped in this realm and in this world.  These spirits either were really shitty people in life or they have some sort of unresolved business.  For some metapsychological reason, these people can't move on and explore the vastness of the cosmos.  They're stuck here and can't escape.  Once the building they inhabit is torn down or the people they were connected to in life all die, then they're released.

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There are ultimately countless other possibilities concerning what happens to the human consciousness after death.  Once we walk through that black veil, ultimately there is no telling what we could experience.  That uncertainty, that fear of the unknown is what has compelled every culture that has ever existed to try and come up with some explanation or theory about what happens to us when our bodies shut off.  As humans, we're not comfortable with not knowing.  It scares us.  We especially don't like the idea of the people we love inhabiting non-existence forever once they leave us.  That possibility is also too painful for us to cope with.

Once we walk through that final black veil and jump into the black abyss of death, the abyss that everyone preceding us has jumped into, the abyss where we know not what awaits, we know one thing for certain.  As Peter Pan said…

AAA (Ask the Atheist Anything)

Last week, I opened up the floor to everybody on my Facebook friends list to ask me any question they wanted regarding my religious beliefs. Fun for me to do? Yes.  Stupid?  Maybe.  Social suicide?  Most definitely.

For the uninitiated, I was born an atheist, converted to Christianity at around 5 years old, became fundamental in my beliefs at 18, and did a complete 180 and became an atheistic humanist at age 24.  A lot of people knew me as the guy who spent a lot of time reading the “Good” Book, praying, helping to lead youth groups, and trying to work Jesus into nearly every conversation I had.  Now completely devoid of any religious belief, a lot of people either like to engage me and discuss why this change occurred, while some completely avoid the topic.  Religion, just like always, is still a subject that I love to discuss, and I figured this would be a good opportunity to not only discuss and engage, but to also share my story.

I received quite a lot of questions that require in-depth answers, so this entry is part one in what will be a two part series.

A disclosure upfront: if you’re offended by the critical discussion of religion, then just stop reading now.  I’m going to have a pretty harsh critique of religion and faith in general and Christianity in particular.  If you’re okay with that – then read on.  If not, go back to your game of Solitaire.  Now let’s get this bad boy started.

And the most popular and obvious question comes from Angela, Claudia, and Bob, was: 

Question #1: What happened to change you?

I grew up in a very loving, supportive, and awesome Christian family.  Although I was born an Atheist, at age 5 I regularly went to this Christian group for boys at my church called Royal Rangers, where they teach you how to tie knots that you’ll never need to use and that you’re going to slowly and painfully be burned alive for infinity unless you believe that a man who existed 2000 years ago was the maker and savior of everything.  Having been mildly burned by an outdoor grill earlier in the year, I was keenly aware of my aversion to heat,  and the thought of feeling that heat forever all over my body terrified me to no end.  So I cried and I cried until fear completely overwhelmed me and I gave in.  This made Jesus happy so he came and lived inside of my heart. 

For most of my childhood, I went to church and believed that this Christian god was the one true God. Not much happened during this period, except my general acceptance of the beliefs of Christianity as explained to me by grownups.  You know, no swearing, no masturbating, etc. Then in 2004 I started taking my faith in god very seriously, taking a literalist view of Scripture, believing that the Bible wasn’t just a collection of stories meant to teach us life lessons, but was literally and historically true.  Adam and Eve really did live and hold a conversation with a snake, Noah really did fit every species on earth into one boat, Jesus really did rise from the dead,  homosexuality is sinful, masturbation is evil, sex outside of wedlock is gross and wrong, women being pastors is unbiblical, etc. etc.  If the Bible said it, I believed it.  I volunteered at my youth group, was a youth leader, lead Bible studies and prayer groups, gave sermons, and studied the Bible on a daily basis and listened to sermons online from morning until night.

Then in 2008, I started doing something very dangerous for any Christian.  I started broadening the media I was exposed to.  My theology started to get fairly liberal.  I started questioning whether or not god was really interested whether people played with themselves or that he really chose to torture humans for eternity just because they didn’t accept the correct set of propositions before they died.

Then something really crazy happened – I started listening to people that didn’t teach me WHAT to think – they taught me HOW to think.  George Carlin and Penn & Teller taught me the fine art of critical thinking.  They showed me that most ideas that you’re presented with in this world are demonstrably wrong and intentionally deceitful and that you need to be intentionally critical of all ideas, especially when it comes to the biggest bullshit story of them all: religion.

But the real rock in front of the tomb of my Christianity was actually reading the Bible thoroughly for myself without using the lens and interpretations of others.  Most Christians cherry pick which verses they pay attention to.  They love to read verses about Jesus healing the sick and giving self-denying sermons, or Paul giving encouragement to struggling churches.  But here are some passages that they either ignore purposefully or are blissfully ignorant of.  Do you know that if you actually read your bible, you’d find that this morally monstrous Iron Age God of War commanded, approved, and condoned of:

●      Rape.  God commanded

○    The rape of all the Midianite girls who were virgins (Numbers 31:7-18 NLT)

○    That a female rape victim be forced to marry her attacker if her attacker paid for her (Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)

○    That captive women have their head shaved and be raped if her owner was attracted to her (Deuteronomy 21:10-14 NAB)

○    A man may keep a woman against her will for the sole purpose of having sex with her (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)Pillaging

●      Murder of non-believers.  God commanded his people to kill:

○    Homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13 NAB)

○    People who don’t listen to priests (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)

○    Witches (Exodus 22:17 NAB)

○    Fortunetellers (Leviticus 20:27 NAB)

○    Members of other religions (Exodus 22:19 NAB)

○    Nonbelievers (2 Chronicles 15:12-13 NAB)

○    Fornicators (Leviticus 21:9 NAB)

○    Adulterers (Leviticus 20:10 NLT)

●      The ritual sacrifice of one’s own children

●      Human trafficking

●      Ethnic cleansing

●      Bride-price

●      Indiscriminate massacre

And by the way, God’s personal kill count in the Bible would put any Call of Duty player’s to shame, coming in at 2,301,427.

A lot of Christians will try explain these verses away by saying that God was constrained to work within the customs of the people and culture of the time.  But how can God, who is supposedly omnipotent, have his hands tied by these barbaric desert wandering ancient lunatics?  He’s either not omnipotent, or he’s not benevolent and kind.  He’s either impotent or he’s evil.  Or it’s all been made up by crude uneducated morally reprehensible patriarchal brutes thousands of years ago. 

Christians will also claim that most of these atrocities happened in the Old Testament and Jesus came to change all of that in fulfillment of the Law and Messianic prophecies.  So what happened?  God was a little angry and rash and was responsible for the pain and suffering of millions of abused, raped, murdered, and enslaved people, but now he’s starting to develop some moral character and mature a little bit so he came down to sacrifice himself to himself in some barbaric ritual sacrifice?  Ridiculous.

I have plenty of issues and grievances with religion and Christianity in particular, but these purely evil verses are without a doubt my biggest grievance.  After thoughtfully considering these verses, it became an issue of conscience.  How could I support and affirm such an evil, vile, and morally reprehensible book?  I couldn’t.  And to ignore these verses and discount them means that I’m constructing my own religion that isn’t really Christianity.  And where’s the truth in that?  As Paul said in Corinthians, it’s time to put away childish things.  So I did just that.

Jayson asks

Question #2: Which atheist philosopher/thinker/writer has most inspired you and why?

Like I mentioned before, George Carlin and Penn & Teller are the dudes that really initiated change in me.  Carlin is famous for completely trashing ideas that we’re told not to question, and he challenged authority and gave it the finger and that was really appealing to me.

Watching Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! was another huge stepping stone for me.  Episode after episode, they demonstrate how a popular and pervasive idea is false and most of the time harmful.  I didn’t agree with everything they said necessarily, but again, it was a great lesson in thinking critically about ideas and how just because it’s popular and supported by people who are intelligent, doesn’t mean it has any merit.

The author who finally put what I was thinking into very concise, hard-hitting, and elegant words was Sam Harris.  I read his book The End of Faith:  Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and it was life changing and beautiful, and was finally what brought the shackles of religion crumbling off of me.

And finally, who I enjoy listening to most now is Matt Dillahunty of The Atheist Experience (he’s very popular on YouTube).  His story is very similar to mine and he’s a brilliant thinker.

Question #3: Which theist author/thinker/writer do you think provides the strongest case for theism?

Without a doubt, for me it’s Lee Strobel and C.S. Lewis.  Strobel because he claims to bring journalistic integrity to his work and because he interviews so-called experts in their field who support his message.  His books are very flawed of course and heavily criticized, but he certainly had me convinced for awhile.

Another Theist author which I still respect is C.S. Lewis.  His book Mere Christianity had a pretty powerful impact on me as a teenager, and had me absolutely convinced that there was a logical foundation to my beliefs.  If any Christian should try and make an effort to re-convert me however, they should use the Chronicles of Narnia books, as they’ll forever have a poetic and narrative hold on my cold dead atheist heart!

Question #4: What do you find to be the strongest case against the existence of god?

There are countless of great arguments against the existence of a god.  But the strongest argument to me is that even if there were no criticisms against the existence of god, the proposition that there IS NOT a god CAN NOT be proven.  You can’t disprove the existence of something.  You can only PROVE the existence of something.  If I said that I had an invisible alien following me around everywhere I go, there’s absolutely no logical process you can go through that would definitively prove my statement false. 

To claim that there is an invisible god creator who controls everything, you need consistent, rational, and evidentiary support, to which there is none.  Belief in a creator, and belief in Christianity, is accepting an inconsistent, illogical, and completely groundless claim.  If there’s no reasonable criteria for which an idea can be disproven, then the proposition is flawed and should be thrown out.

However, many believers love to say that their beliefs are logical and supported by evidence.  But in my experience, there are certain key theological areas that you can apply logical pressure to, and EVERY SINGLE TIME, no matter if I’m talking to somebody academically trained in theology or a complete ignoramus, they eventually say that what they believe requires some measure of faith (believing in a proposition without any legitimate or compelling reasons).  And since faith is not a good thing (you could only prove that faith is a good thing through what?  That’s right: reason and evidence.  It all comes back to reason and evidence), the theist argument loses all credibility.   Faith isn’t a good thing.  It’s gullibility and it’s stupidity, and I don’t condone either.  This guy is a great example.  His gullbility has led him to have faith in the reality of professional wrestling, and shuts off his mind to any possiblity otherwise.

Sorry buddy.  "It's real to me, dammit!"  couldn't and shouldn't carry weight with anybody else.

With that being said though, I would never say for certain that I know that there is no god.  Realistically, nobody can really say anything for certain.  Could there be a super intelligence in some other galaxy or realm of existence?  Actually, there most likely is.  With the discovery of the fact that there are trillions of galaxies and that we live in a multiverse, who can say anything for certain?  But I’m as certain as anybody can reasonably be about anything that the Christian god DOES NOT exist.

Question #5: How has becoming an atheist changed you, as a person?

I’m free from the belief that both myself and the people that I love are vile, wicked, evil people to the core and that we all deserve to be tortured endlessly forever.  I can’t convey in words how absolutely liberating the absence of that belief is.  I can now look at myself and other people and see inherent value and worth, whereas before, all I could see were “dirty menstrual rags” who needed Jesus.

I’ve become more appreciative of my life and more hungry to squeeze in as many awesome experiences as I can before my time on this earth expires.  Before, when I believed that I had all of eternity to experience joy, I lived my life complacently.  “If I don’t get around to making that painting I wanted, oh well.  I’ll be able to paint and realize this idea fully when I’m basking in the presence of god”.  Since that belief is no longer there, I don’t take the time that I know that I do have for granted.

It’s made me rely on myself and my own intuitions, skills and sensibilities.  I still have this knee-jerk reaction when faced with crisis: I still find myself starting to pray.  Praying gave me comfort as well as the belief that things could never get too bad, because there was a god out there who loved me and had a plan.  Now that I believe that not to be the case, I find myself making more of an effort in all areas of my life, because I know that there’s no metaphysical safety net.  It’s a harsh reality, but I’m relying on myself and dealing with reality on reality’s terms.

And finally, my atheism has made me angry.  Angry that people I love have been programmed, most from a very young age, with poisonous and divisive beliefs.  And their minds have been so controlled and manipulated and deluded to the point that they believe that their beliefs are beautiful and inclusive and not destructive and divisive.  I know people that are teaching their young children that they are rotten and depraved to the core and that if they don’t accept the correct set of propositions, then they’ll be tortured forever.  And they believe that teaching them this is a good thing.  That kills me, and it makes me angry and it makes me sad and it makes me compassionate, and reaffirms for me that this anger is valuable, valid, and necessary.

On a final note – please don’t listen to anything I say.  If I can get one point across to anybody reading this, it’s THINK FOR YOURSELF.  Consider my ideas, but pursue true knowledge, open your mind, and criticize ideas.  Don’t take my word on anything.  Stay tuned for part two coming soon!

Looking A Disappearing Gift Horse in the Mouth: What I Hate About Skyrim

Chicago?  Not anymore.  For the past month, I've been living in Skyrim.  I've climbed the slopes of the Throat of the World, I've fended off Dark Brotherhood assassins who randomly make pitiful attempts on my life.  I've crushed rebellions, looted dungeons, and ripped apart dragons limb from limb.  I've even shouted "Dovahkiin!!!" from my bedroom window as packs of birds flew off the roof of my garage in a startled frenzy.

It's been a wild fantasy joyride so far, and I'm sure to put many more hours into Skyrim before all is said and done.  As great as the game is though, I'm not without my complaints.  As a fan of open world games and Bethesda's games in particular, there are many aspects of Skryim that are lacking and leave me wanting to put the controller down and just sit tight waiting for the next Mass Effect game.  Let's discuss.

An all too familiar sight in Skyrim.  What you'll spend about
88% of the game looking at

TOO MANY DAMN DUNGEONS FOR THIS DRAGONBORN

Okay.  I get it.  One of the primary reasons that people play The Elder Scrolls series is to stumble across a cave or a crypt, slay whatever asswipe skeleton warrior or necromancer that gets in your way, and find really great loot.  But c'mon, Bethesda.  When I go to a place like The Bard's College, I expect to have quests that involve - you know, being a bard.  NOT FIGHTING MY WAY THROUGH COUNTLESS DUNGEONS FINDING FLUTES OF SUMMONING AND DRUMS OF ILLUSION.  A better option would be to, I don't know, break up the tedious dungeon crawling mechanic that you rely so heavily upon and put the player in some interesting situations that, you know, a BARD might find himself in - considering I signed up at a fucking bards college, not an archaeological dig.  Maybe I have to impress somebody with a song and dance, maybe I have to master some sort of musical instrument before an inn will let me play there.

At the start of nearly every quest, I know how it's going to end before I even begin.  It will end with me standing 4 levels below ground in some spooky Dwemer crypt over a boss corpse with a train of dead enemies running all the way back up to the surface while a shortcut door in the back of the room gives me quick access back to the surface world.  Break up the monotony guys, that's all I'm asking.  Actually, no it's not.  I have a lot more to ask.

Look in those beautiful eyes.  She's as
cold and lifeless as the mountains of Winterhold.

CARDBOARD CUTOUT COMPANIONS

Since The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion came out, we've seen two installments of the brilliantly innovative Mass Effect series hit store shelves.  One of Mass Effect's strong points is how interesting they make your companions.  They have personalities, histories, quirks, strengths, weaknesses - all making them not only helpful in a fight, but absolutely fascinating to interact with.  This was never a strong point in Oblivion, but Bethesda still had interesting companions using the same engine in Fallout 3 and even when it handed the franchise over for New Vegas.  Each companion had a story and a history, and the more you talked to that character, the more you learned about them.  Each character even had their own special quest that gave you more insight into who they are.  As far as I can tell, that's completely absent from Skyrim.

There's no character in Skyrim that's on par with Garrus or Grunt or Miranda.  My companion, Lydia, who is required to follow me as I'm the Thane of Whiterun, is nothing more than a mule to carry my loot.  I wish I had an actual mule, because that jackass would be a lot more interesting than this poor stone-faced bitch Lydia.  She repeats the same tired dialogue again and again, and as far as I can tell, has no unique ways in which she can be interacted with.  Again, dynamic companions have never been a strong point for The Elder Scrolls series, but if Fallout 3 and New Vegas can make interesting companions, then I expect the same from Skyrim.

So that's what he's been up to...

IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS

How hard would it have been to include a barber shop or salon or whatever they called it back then where you can edit your character's hair?  Why do I spend 1000 gold pieces on a horse only to have it disappear on me and never return?  Why do characters constantly repeat the same lines over and over again ad nausea?  Why can't I have different weapon layout lists to add to quick equip list?  Why isn't there a survival mode like in Fallout where I have to drink and eat?

I DON'T THINK SHE'S THAT PRETTY

For being released a half a decade later, Skyrim doesn't seem like a huge leap in graphical quality over its predecessor.  I'm not gonna rag on Bethesda here too much because I don't know what kind of graphical limitations they were working with.  But when you get the chance, go up to a high vantage point and look down at the surface of Skyrim.  Do you see how you can very obviously see a pattern repeating itself over and over again?  The grass, snow, and rock textures very obviously repeat once you get high enough, breaking the illusion.  Which isn't a huge problem but I'm really surprised they didn't find a way to mask texture repetition.

The shadows tend to act really wonky too, sometimes convulsing and appearing jagged before correcting itself again.

Don't get me wrong - I love Skyrim and I don't mean to look a randomly disappearing fellating gift horse in the mouth, I just expected a little more from a studio and game series that I respect so much.  Bethesda - when you begin developing The Elder Scrolls VI, do us all a favor and pay more attention to what the Mass Effect series is doing - because what few things you're doing dead wrong, they're getting wonderfully right.

"If you don't like America, then leave!" Okay. Maybe I will.

I’ve somehow managed to ignore politics for most of my life - because most of the time it’s just a bunch of boring bullshit.  It’s a giant group of crooked, slightly overweight, old, irrelevant and out-of-touch white guys sitting around proposing bills, ratifying amendments, ironing out deficits, having sex with little boys, soliciting male prostitutes…yadda yadda yadda.

But let me tell you, all of a sudden, I’m starting to pay real close attention.  I don’t know whether it’s because I’m getting older and maturing (yeah right) and paying attention to this kind of garbage happens naturally, or because shit’s about to hit the fan in a big bad way.  But over the course of the past year or so, it seems that the U.S. government has been waging an all-out war on the freedoms of the American people.  From the violent opposition to the peaceful ‘Occupy’ protests, to SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), and to most recently the National Defense Authorization Act, this year has been an all-out assault on the rights and freedoms of the American people.  As my hero, the late great George Carlin once said: “That’s all we’ve ever had in this country: a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news, even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter.”  It seems that statement has never rung more true than it does now.

This National Defense Authorization Act is a very scary thing because it seems to obliterate our rights completely.  It’s tricky, because there are two parts of this bill that seem to contradict each other.  It’s very cleverly worded at first making you think that it doesn’t apply to U.S. citizens, because in the first part of the bill it says that people who are declared to be “enemy combatants” can be arrested, detained, interrogated, held without access to an attorney or trial, tortured, and even killed.  But end of the bill essentially says it can apply to American citizens “if we want it to.”

WHAT!?  My government, the same government that has drilled this idea that I’m a free citizen into my head my entire life, now has legal precedent to arrest, detain, interrogate, torture, and kill me simply by suspecting that I’m a terrorist!?  And with SOPA, I can possibly go to jail on felony charges for streaming so-called copyrighted content?  And the Department of Justice can shut down my website and stop vendors from doing business with me even on SUSPICIONS that the site in question is streaming copyrighted content and expose me AND the hosting site to unlimited liability?

This isn’t even North Korea or China that we’re talking about here.  This is the UNITED STATES!!!  How pathetic and oppressive have we become?  The future isn’t very bright for this country, folks.  And it’s getting darker every single day.  You often hear patriotic nutjobs respond to people who criticize this “great” nation with awe-inspiring ignorant phrases like “Well, if you don’t like *blank* about the U.S., then you can leave!”  Well, let me tell you, for the first time I’m seriously considering it.  Time to bring Canada into my job search.