"Peace with you." (I think)

I'd like to share an intriguing parallel I've experienced with a video game, in regards to my current condition with recovering from multiple gun shot wounds.

I must say right now, as it is time to take pain medication, my wounds feel alive like a Christmas tree along my torso, with pain spots up and down with an accumulated passage to the middle of my back. My back only hurts when I've been sitting in a certain position for too long and am in need of medication to ease the usual pain that has nothing to do with my back. Physical pain has a way of spreading like a fire if you don't contain it.

Well tonight my mom drove me to get a camera that I left at a friend's house a while back, and needless to say, from the harrowing experience between the trips to Washington Hospital Center during and after my visit, it grew tense in the car as we approached that side of town again after dark on a Friday. We got the camera and all is well, but let's say it's something we won't be doing again any time soon for personal reasons.

Well after coming home and starting on the six pack of Harp, I felt like getting some work done in Far Cry 2.

It's a game where you wander around some territory in Africa, earning friends' respect, money and items through this Mad Max-like wasteland where people seem to only communicate through bullets. Basically there are two factions lording over the countryside, and both of them will shoot at you on sight. If that isn't rugged enough, the terrain is much worse, believe me. They seemed to make the top priority in programming the environment, because it's by far more authentic than any game I've ever played. We're talking rain forest, desert, plains, etc. I've driven across the Untied States twice, and can vouch that this is probably as real as it gets for this generation of computer systems.

Well where do the parallels come in?

First off, you get shot a lot, which I can identify with. When you get to a certain point in health, you're essentially bleeding, to which you hit a button to bandage yourself (going into one of a handful of animations of your pulling the determined bullet out of your body through a knife, pliers or teeth) and then for the most part trying to find a way to shoot yourself out alive. There is a lot of shooting.

Then there is the surviving. They give you no shortage of things to do to keep your experience interesting, and often times the traveling to these objectives are just as adventurous as the objectives themselves. You mostly go by land or by sea. Some places have a hand glider, but it sucks. I usually take the trucks with the machine guns placed in the back, to conserve ammo. By sea there are pontoon boats, or whatever the ones with the big fans are called. I don't know how to describe the terrain so a lot of what I'm describing here is unfortunately lost in translation, but these are the things that will get you around at least. Just imagine being lost in Africa, if you can.

Well anyway, I don't know really how to describe it, but the game really walks you through death-defying situations and for me it's a bit unreal, unlike how it would normally be "unreal". I can still emotionally identify the despair of imminent death, yet you have these buddies in the game which you earn that pull you out of one situation just once, until you meet up with them again at a safe house.

So it's easy for me to feel an emotional bond to the conditions this game puts the character through on more of a level than really most anyone.


Bonus: I've also been thinking how in regard to my constant arguments with these biased (college student who act like activist) Palestinian supporters of the whole Israel/Palestine conflict, that I know a hell of a lot more what it's like to die in the streets than they do. My beef with the Palestinians is that they've been so disorganized over the years and now in terms of governance, relative to Israel. There's probably a whole debate from that one sentence for any knowledgeable person reading this, but let me just say this. Don't talk to me about grief of the killing of innocents until you've spilled your life on the streets in effectively making a stand for the safety of your people. Until you can sympathize with me, don't chastise for my apparent lack of sympathy. Until you realize this war over diplomacy, and not bullets, and certainly not fucking term papers, don't bother. Just don't fucking bother. Because you sure as hell haven't done your share of listening to both sides; only one side.