Assassins Creed: Revelations comes out today...which means I won't be getting it for a couple months

This blog is one of those rare entities where the title of my blog pretty much says what I want the whole blog to say.  And if you want to leave right now, I wouldn't blame you.  You've probably spent minutes, if not hours, reading my posts before only to arrive at the end with your neck involuntarily spasming and contracting your face into your desk.  So leave now if you must.  I won't hold it against you.  You'll just miss out on the chance to win free money.

Now that I have you hooked, I'm going to tell you that there actually is no chance at winning free money.  But hahaha- you're hooked!  You can't just leave now!  You'd look/feel foolish.  So even though you'll keep reading until the end with slightly blushing cheeks and an increasingly complex plan for vengeance, by the time you reach the end of this I'll most likely be washing my hair in another country.  Also, you'll notice that I've managed to stretch a blog that admittedly was summarized in the title into two whole paragraphs. 

(I just wanted a chance to show a picture of pre-meltingly hot Patrick McDreamy Pants)

But let's get down to some business. Because I do actually have something I would consider to be relevant commentary on the thesis I proposed in my title.

Yes, the new Assassins Creed game (Revelations) comes out today and I want it- bad.  In fact, on my Wishpot wish list, I gave it the highest desire ranking I could-  I neeeed it!  I've played through the first three games (although Assassins Creed: Revelations is not Assassins Creed IV...it's more like II.III), and could conceivably never own another (non-Assassins Creed) game for the rest of my life.  They're amazing.


The Assassins Creed games are basically every dudes fantasy set a few hundred years in the past.  Your whole job is to climb up buildings, kick butt, mess with the local police force, and sometimes kill bad guys.  You have an almost unlimited means of income.  You can rent women.  At any given time, you'll have a pistol, two hidden daggers, a sword, a knife, some vials of poison, and several throwing blades on your person.  You are always in peak physical fitness and you can traipse around the city wearing robes and armor.  In other words, this is exactly the kind of stuff we used to play when we were kids, except our weapons were sticks and women were still the enemy (cooties are much like a weaponized Krippen virus back then).  I don't need to buy any more video games ever...that is, until they make a new Assassins Creed game.
 

I'm mostly joking when I say this, but that's pretty much what capitalism is built on- the production and consumption of things that we don't really need.  And the people that make these things (and the people that market them) are very, VERY good at their jobs.  Sure, I don't need this game at all in a technical sense, and I definitely need things like toilet paper, gasoline, and a place to live much more than I need to roam around virtual Constantinople in the 1500s. I know these things in my head.  I know the the games $59.99 price tag will go down considerably after a few months, and I'll be able to play the same game but for cheaper (while also having a home where I can wipe my bum with the toilet paper I drove to the store to buy).

But that didn't stop me from having to basically strap myself to a chair and take myself offline over the past week as my mind kept trying to figure out some way, any way, to get my hands on that game on the day it came out.  "How much cushion do we have in the checking account?  How much remaining balance is on that credit card?  How much could I get if I sold this game or that book or those children?  Hey, I could order from here and open a new account...".  Even though I rationally understand that the ability to wait will give us added financial stability while saving money in the long run, my brain was still trying to convince me to just go ahead and get the game already.  Thanks a lot, brain.

Please understand, I'm not looking for sympathy (maybe a little) or a handout (although I wouldn't give it back)- I'm just relaying the ridiculous struggle that I'm sure millions of Americans go through when their favorite book/movie/game/toy is released to stores.  Somehow, whether from our parents or our friends or commercials or our own humanity (or a combination of the above), we get roped into the capitalist mindset and struggle to suppress immediate gratification for trivia even though the practical situational reality should work just fine to ensure that we focus our energies on the bottom parts of the hierarchy.  You know, just things like FOOD.  WATER.  SHELTER.


Capitalism doesn't want to hear that noise though, so they created credit cards.  And while things have changed in recent years to make things less unfair for credit card users (including not having college kids sitting around giving out free t-shirts for signing up for your first credit card), that doesn't change the reality for myself and millions of Americans. 

I don't think this is a moral issue or something where it makes me (and people like me) somehow 'inferior' to others.  The system was created to exploit us!  I'm frustrated that the Occupy Wall Street dividing line seems to be between hippie socialists and stoic Great Depression survivors.  Many on the stoic side say , "If I want something I just save for it.  I don't live past my means".  Which is, by all accounts, outstanding.  I commend you.  That doesn't give you the right to look down on the rest of us, but I commend you.

Unfortunately, that's not everybody.  And it isn't that I want a bailout, or a do-over.  I made mistakes- I know that, I own them, and have no problem paying back the money that I borrowed against my future to pay for the present. That's my role in all this.  I may not have completely understood the ramifications, but I at least knew that I'd have to pay this money back.

The system is still screwed up though.  It's designed around people like me.  Without people like me, it falls apart.  So they use crazy powerful science to manipulate our feelings, emotions, thinking and get us to desire things that we don't really need (or even want)...and then they give us the means to purchase those things even when we don't have the means.  That's why I'm generally for the Occupy movement.  The system is designed to keep the masses suppressed and immobilized while a select few hold onto the resources and power in our society.

But I'm getting slightly off topic.  I honestly didn't mean to turn this into anti-capitalist propaganda.  I actually was hoping primarily to talk about how I'm refocusing my other blog.  You know, the Sojourn Boulevard one?  What am I talking about- of course you remember.  Pretend like I didn't even question.

I'm pretty much turning it into my own little on-line journal/diary/what have you about Ezio's escapades through late 15th-early 16th century Italy.  There's three games (as well as some novels and a wiki), so I should have lots of info for plenty of shenanigans to keep me busy.  I will miss the Darth Vader/Dr. Manhattan/Ezio roomie situation (and possibly one day will bring it back), but in the end I just don't have the chops to pull it off right now.  Not that I have the chops to pull of most of what I write, but hey, what do you expect?  Don't look for it anytime soon necessarily- I've actually taken it offline for the time being- because I'm trying to focus more on seriousy type stuff.  But I just wanted to let you, the faithful reader, be in the know before the know gets known.  Ya know?

So now- aren't you glad you finished reading this post?  Please, don't answer that.

PIC- https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZpEv46uXahSw9S0bZ8K8ogVBbeobrWDV1A6PFsATEd8fUf_W40iEcjnl3g5JUTSbZFYxwxaukGEFoWUH2V0XjnMKVWzceQAIWsbgJ7PDsw9GQDs3xVaHyD8c2eVdvNRw4UW3yOvNyBRk/s1600/Can-t-Buy-Me-Love-caps-patrick-dempsey-7134090-720-528.jpg

Freecell football. Yeah, it's pretty much what you think it is.

Here at youshouldknowjasonparks.blogspot.com*, we strive to bring you a smorgasbord of interesting content to make you think, (hopefully) laugh, and shake your head in amazement/disgust.  My expressed goal is to bring it with each and every post.  Sometimes that means I write about my thoughts about God.  Sometimes that means I keep you up to date on my Fantasy Football team.  Sometimes that means I deliver some ideas about humanity in the world we live in.  But today, for the first time ever, I'm going to talk to you about my absolute favoritest card game that I play on the computer- Free Cell.

If you haven't played Free Cell then please stop reading this blog right now, go over to the program menu, click on the game menu, highlight Free Cell, and get ready to have your mind blown.  Free Cell is like solitaire if solitaire was King Leonidas played by Patrick Dempsey if Patrick Dempsey was Patrick Swayze.  Yeah, it's like that.

The thing I love most about it is that it requires a good amount of strategy and planning.  In solitaire, you're at the complete mercy of the deck.  All you know is the cards on the top- most of the deck is a complete mystery.  And the stock too is completely blind- so to me it's much more of a game of chance than it is strategy (although there are elements of both, to be sure).  So when I win a game of solitaire I feel good- but I also feel like I was more like a mouse in a box, led by a series of pre-designed pellet droppings to an already determined outcome.

With Free Cell, it's all on me.  Everything is laid out there.  Win or lose, it's most likely due to some sort of human error I made instead of some random placement of cards.  In fact (and when I say 'fact', you should know I'm taking my facts from Wikipedia), there is only one unwinnable Free Cell game out of 32,000 (from the original Windows), while the estimated number of unwinnable games in solitaire is between 8.5-18%.  Basically if I lose in solitaire then it's 20% likely that I had no chance before the game even started.  Meanwhile a Free Cell game will pretty much always rise and fall based on my abilities (which I should tell you are substantial).

And I like that.  I like the feeling of being in complete control of my game destiny.  That means that when I win, I win because I was smarter than a stack of computer generated playing cards.  I was able to use my mental faculties and precognition to triumph over my inanimate enemy.  If I lose, it's because I made a wrong choice or got ahead of myself- no mystical force leading me astray.  No computer defense to accuse of cheating.  The only person to throw the controller at is myself.

But hey, the point of this blog post wasn't really to trumpet the superiority of Free Cell over solitaire (ATTENTION- FREE CELL IS SUPERIOR TO SOLITAIRE).  My point is to let you know that I am challenging myself to my own Free Cell football league.  Yes, my efforts to incorporate football into every facet of my life knows no bounds.

Let me explain what I'm doing.  I'm going through a series of 16 game 'seasons', if you will.  At the end of each 'season', I advance to the playoffs depending on how many victories I achieve.  9-11 wins gets me in the Wildcard round, and 12-16 gives me a first round bye.  If I make it to the playoffs, then I follow the NFL playoff format until I win the 'Super Bowl' or lose (whichever comes first).  My first 'season' I went 12-4  but lost in the equivalent of the conference championship game (note: the only way that I could make this possibly cooler is if I somehow managed to clone myself into any multiple of four and set up equal divisions that I could compare records against and actually set up a literal playoff tree against myself.  Science, get on this please).  I was devastated to be sure- so I went out and made some impressive moves in free agency and drafted shrewdly to fill some needs.  I'll let you figure out what that means.

Last 'season', which I finished tonight, I went 11-5.  Not my most impressive finish, but considering I started 1-4, it was quite a feat- especially since I won the Super Bowl!  That's right, I managed to overcome a 1-4 start to finish with a playoff berth and like the Green Bay Packers of last year, I won four straight games to reach the pinnacle of my trade.  Move over, Freddie Mercury- I am the champion, my friend.

Rest assured faithful reader, I'm not going to be bringing you frequent updates of my Free Cell successes and failings.  This will probably be the only time you have to read about these shenanigans.  But I did think that the world needed to know that I take my Free Cell as seriously as I do my Fantasy Football.  Which is to say that I take it way too seriously.

*I suppose that hyperlinking to a website that you're already at is a little superfluous.  It's like giving you a map to a door, and the door is in the middle of the room that you're already in.  But that's okay because it's just nice to know that there's no place like home.