God is dead but my hair is perfect

I'm not sure what caused me to cease to believe, but at the age of 8, I became an atheist. My father, a devout christian, had urged me to pray twice times a day since I could talk, and one day I just woke up and didn't see the logic in believing in something which existence there was no scientific evidence in support of. And this came from the girl who the very same year ate three snails on a dare. It should also be mentioned that I didn't stop believing in Santa Claus until I was ten. You know, he at least brought me gift - that's a deity I could believe in. However, the very day I stopped believing in God, I discovered my own and my family's mortality, so that was a bummer. The years went on and I became a very angry Richard Dawkins/Marilyn Manson-loving teenager who loved to bash any Christian person I could get my hands on, until I met a friend who believed in God and still was one of the smartest people I had ever met - a person who made me realize that I had been trying to convert religious people to atheism more than they had tried to convert me. Since then, I am still a firm believer in the non-existence of any form of deity, but I have realized that religion is just a way of coping with death and questions regarding the meaning of life, and if it helps some people, religion could actually have a place in a society without being that fundamentalist cult I have always perceived it as. I for one know that I would love to believe in an afterlife in order not to be so afraid of death, but I just can't believe, and I have seen too much of the horrible effects of organized religion to be able to stand religion in anything but on an individual level, and sometimes not even that. However, atheists aren't always much better: atheist like to be the voice of science and rationality, but some of them, including teenage me, are just condescending assholes.

So, here's the pros and cons of being an atheist according to me.

PROS:
- No harsh moral constraints or rules; you can have awesome gay divorce-whiskey-evolution-abortion-picnics and no one will judge you. OK, a little. I'm judging you already.
- You feel in control of your life by defining your own set of moral values and purpose in life. The meaning of life? Eating onion rings and watching 30 Rock? All right then!
- You get to respond to your Christian friend yelling from the bathroom that the toilet paper is out by screaming "WHERE'S YOUR GOD NOW?!"
- You share a trait with Stephen Fry. Nuff said.

CONS:
- The lack of an afterlife. For atheists, I believe death is even more terrifying than for believers, because our entire belief-system is based on the belief that there is no such thing as heaven or hell, and that all that awaits us after death is soil and silence. Atheist death consoling is really the worst: "Don't cry, I'm sure he's rotting away peacefully in his coffin! He'll always be present in your life, in the form of that unpaid student loan! Please stop crying, it'll be your turn soon to enter the eternal darkness!".
- The lack of cool religious rituals and decadence. Come on, Pope Borgia's orgies wouldn't be half as indulgent if he didn't justify it by referring to the protection of an all-mighty deity. Catholicism has done a lot of terrible things, but man, the bling and the shame-sex is to die for.
- Free will. Because sometimes it would be great to have a God who could decide all the trivial things - not whom I should marry or what I can or can't do with my body, but things like deciding what laundry detergent to buy or if I really should eat that sixteenth cookie.

 I have met many Christians who refuse to interpret the bible literally and instead propose a religion based on actual love and understanding, and I have met atheists who quote Richard Dawkins as their bible - fundamentalists exist everywhere, no matter what religion or anti-religion. In the end, it's really all about what moral rules you let guide your life - your own, or guidance from a two thousand year old book (or in the Dawkins-case, a six year old book)? We all have that moral voice of conscience, the question is just whether it is your own voice or someone else's. My problem is that my conscience mostly consists of a urine-drenched hobo rummaging around my brain yelling "WHERE ARE MY FECKING MOZZARELLA STICKS??". But you know, you can't have it all.

The Quirky Girl Scale

I've always been a geeky person. Not in that hot supposedly-geeky-but-has-no-knowledge-of-the-game girl "Oh, I love Zelda, he's so hot I'm going to lick my xbox control" way, but in a "Why would I need friends? I have 142 Pokemon! Please don't leave me" way: I spent my childhood collecting dolls, making up very odd scenarios between them (I actually had a doll wedding which ended up in divorce. Twice.) and writing stories about deep, meaningful literary themes such as "Mora, the candy queen" and "Princess Rose spends entire day describing different types of mythological nymphs". As I aged, I developed a lot of new interests, but kept a few - such as my fondness for Pokemon. During Elementary School, my nerdy interests suddenly turned to popularity - I had breasts and a level 100 Espeon, and I'm still not sure which of them made me attractive in the eyes of teenage boys. However, as other girls also developed breasts and more appropriate interests such as giggling and breathing on a daily basis, I was lost. Luckily I found a boyfriend who actually encouraged my somewhat childish interests (mostly because he loves My Little Pony and thus didn't really have any moral leverage), but it made me think - what is the appropriate amount of Quirkiness for a girl? Where is the line drawn between loving an 80's videogame and collecting cats dressed as The Simpsons characters? I seem to use that line like a skipping rope: I get points for playing and loving Mass Effect and knowing a little too much about World War II, but it was frowned upon when I told a friend I wanted to buy another Pokemon Onesie (I already have a Pikachu, but definitely need a Snorlax), and he specifically asked me not to. I said oppression, he said all my friends would leave me.  I for one viewed this as a feminist crusade: no woman should ever be denied the fundamental right to get drunk and purchase Japanese fleece costumes on ebay! Or maybe it was the right to vote. Potato, Potato.

My point with this post is to investigate what level of quirkiness is viewed as acceptable and interesting in a girl - where is the line drawn between quirkiness and weirdness?

Knowing all the characters in Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid and Dragon Age: QUIRKY
Writing quite intense turian-on-human fan-fiction about Garrus and FemShep: WEIRD

Having a Pikachu bag which is specifically made for 10-year-olds ironically: QUIRKY
Spending half an hour describing to random person in club why evolving your Pikachu to a Raichu is mere treachery to the character: WEIRD

Being able to recite every important battle in WWII and how it affected the outcome of the war without hesitating: QUIRKY
Exclaiming "WOW, I know Hitler was a dick, but he loved the exact same pastries as I do! Do you think pastry is a gateway drug to genocide?": WEIRD

Having that sort of odd and random sense of humour a la Zoey Deschanel that mesmererizes men : QUIRKY
Constantly joking about dwarves, genocide and impending alcoholism: WEIRD

Taking good care of your cat, whom you have named Mr Whiskers: QUIRKY
Getting angry at your cat Nietzsche for contracting cat chlamydia instead of cat syphilis BECAUSE IT IS JUST NOT FUCKING HISTORICALLY CORRECT: WEIRD

Conclusion: Weird is awesome and quirky is terrible - I won't let society dictate what I can or can't do because some men would find it weird and not quirky or feminine: I have standards and class. Now excuse me, I have a giant fleece Pokemon costume from Japan that might originally be intended for furries to order.

Sleepless on the Citadel and other Garrus-Vakarian-related pornos I would pay good money to see

So I just finished playing Mass Effect 3 extended cut. It was amazing. Absolutely fucking amazing. That's as far as I can go without revealing any spoilers and upsetting my 5 readers to the core, but no one can keep me from praising this absolutely astonishing game. The story, the multi-choices, the RPG, the characters - there's just so much love put into the games by the creators - I cried like a baby, and there are few games that affect me in that fashion. Most of them include me being beaten to pulp in Yahtzee. However, there has been a lot of whining from the armada of overly-protective moms and freudeliciously eccentric child psychologists that the games contain too much violence, and I still can't grasp how these people reason: how can it be logical to claim that it is harmful for 15-year-old children to shoot monsters in a video-game, but completely sensible to send them to Iraq or Afghanistan but three years later to shoot actual human beings? And if you're going to bash games for having a disturbing impact on children, there are games without the M-rating that are A LOT worse, which is why I now present my list of games with disturbing moral messages, and rate them according to their level of possible cruelty.

1. Roller Coaster Tycoon
I can't even begin to describe how many little amusement park-goers I have brutally assassinated during the years I played Roller coaster Tycoon: I presume that the creators intended that the possibility to kill people with faulty roller coasters would suffice as a moral aspect of the game, to teach the players some responsibility, but giving kids the possibility to build a roller coaster that ends abruptly in mid air, turn the speed to a maximum and then watch wagon after wagon tumble down towards the ground is just pure madness - and pure entertainment for anyone with an inner sadistic child. The fact that you are also given the possibility to use your divine intervention as the maker of the amusement park for evil is absurdly disturbing: you can actually pick up visitors and drop them into the water, only to watch them scream and cry for help before they drown. Thus, Roller Coaster Tycoon is the perfect game if you like to play God and don't mind the smell of death and cotton candy - because even the kindest little innocent child will sit in front of the computer and yell "THIS IS FOR YOUR NEGATIVE RATING ON MY WATER SPLASH MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE, YOU BASTARD" whilst watching 75 amusement park visitors plummet to their death. Talk to your kids about amusement parks, or someone else will.
Level of cruelty: 8/10

2. The Sims:
I can't even express how realistic and messed up this game is: the game is the wet dream of every serial killer who is too fat to bother walking outside in order to kill people. You can set people on fire (narrow room, Persian mat, the lousy stove or fireplace and boom), drown people in the pool by removing the ladder, starve them, make them pee themselves so much they actually die of shame, electrocute them, scare them to death with the ghosts you have created, let your Sim be devoured by bugs - according to this video, you can actually barbeque your baby: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eq7iUmQck0&feature=related. Apart from killing people, you can commit adultery in front of your spouse, abuse your child enough for the social worker to come and take custody of the child (however, if you are quick, you can kill the social worker before she leaves with your baby. Because you care.) and any other whitetrash element of your choosing -there is room for every possible disturbing family you can imagine. However, sexual relations between family members or between minors are not yet possible. You know, because that would just be sick.
Level of cruelty 10/10

3. Mario Kart:
Because nothing says Road Safety like bombing your friends off of the road, intentionally leaving banana peels for them to slip on and crash into a wall or ingesting mushrooms in order to drive faster. The Fast and the Furious looks like a driving instructor's tutorial by comparison.
Level of cruelty 6/10 

4. Pokemon
This is by far my favourite game ever since I was a kid:  but I can't deny the fact that if you actually deconstruct the game, you realize it is as disturbing as any other game.  This article http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/03/15/weirdest-pokemon-black-white/ describes perfectly the absurdity of the Pokemon games: "Considering that this is a world where ten year-olds are sent out to wander from town to town getting into super-powered cockfights and busting up international criminal organizations". One often finds oneself asking where the hell the social services are held up. However, the most disturbing theme in the games are the animal abuse - one needs not even bother mentioning the fact that the animals are being shrunk and enclosed in Pokeballs and forced to fight until they "faint" (which is, as we know, the only possible risk of being thrashed, drowned, set on fire or torn to pieces in an explosion). The true weirdness are more subtle, but once you realize it, you will never stop thinking about it. For instance, why the hell does Pokemon become pregnant when you enter them into daycare? And since it doesn't seem to exist any other animals, what the hell does people eat? I hardly believe they have all become vegetarians, since they don't seem to treat their pets all that well from the start. But, what do I know - Pokemon appears to be more loyal than regular animals - I for one know that if I asked my cat to follow me around the world fighting other animals for little scraps of metal, he would puke in my shoes for a year.
Level of cruelty 5/10


5. SimCity
If The Sims is the equivalent of a serial killer, SimCity is the equivalent of Pol Pot, Hitler and Stalin in one game. You can easily eradicate an entire city with just a few clicks and make it look like a natural disaster. Because you are fucking God now. I await the expansion SimHolocaust.
Level of cruelty 10/10


6. Tomb Raider
For giving archeology/history students hope of coolness and hot chicks for years. FOR SHAME.

Level of cruelty 3/10



I rest my case. Leave completely norming running-over-hooker-games-and-having-sex-with-aliens-games alone!

Why I absolutely hate the saying "Carpe Diem"

I have been a quite paranoid person ever since I was a small child: being a hypochondriac I am constantly convinced that either my family/friends or I have different types of cancer, I worry that people I love will die in car/plane/hipster bike-crashes, I worry that my apartment will catch fire when I'm not home, I worry that my cats will somehow hang themselves in my dirty laundry - to keep it short, I worry. I've spoken of my worries to a lot of different people, friends as well as professionals, and they all say the same thing: Carpe Diem - capture the day. However, this has never been a comforting help; on the contrary, it just pisses me off. Saying things like "Live like it's your last day" doesn't really help my fear of death - it fucking exacerbates it! Telling me "So, I heard you're afraid of death, so I want you to believe that you're going to die within 24 hours" IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. It's like the worst episode of 24 ever - If I would live each day as if it was my last, I would spend it all crying, rocking back and forth in my shower, eating everything in sight. I would be a complete mess, not in any way liberated. I wouldn't only capture the day; I would capture it, keep it locked up in a well and go all "It puts the lotion in the basket or it gets the hose again" on it. And regarding Carpe Diem - there are things you really shouldn't do, capturing the day or not: people use it as an excuse to do all sorts of stupid things, as if it would be some sort of an enlightened path to inner peace.

- "What? You don't want to use mescaline while babysitting because you might accidentally but the baby in the oven? Come on, live a little! Carpe Diem!"
- "What? You don't feel like trying that new choking-yourself-whilst-touching-yourself-with-mayonaise-game?  Dude, Carpe Diem!"
-"What? You're not into human extermination using a combination of Cyklon B and contained spaces? Mein freude, Carpe Diem!"

OK, I might be exaggerating just a teeny tiny bit, but I just can't stand some of the things people call "living life to the fullest". I know I won't be happier by staying indoors, stay away from all sharp objects and only eat veggies, but I really don't - anyone who's seen me eat half a kilo of marzipan in an hour knows I won't have a very long life, but taking giant risks is not part of living - it's part of dying prematurely for absolutely nothing. I live everyday to the fullest by spending time with my best friends, doing stupid things that won't lead to me lying dead in a gutter and I'm happy - I know I could die tomorrow, and I fucking hate it, but I can still be happy today. I don't need to be told to go skydiving, bungee-jumping or try food that might kill you or at least insult your mother: today, I'll buy a different brand of pasta. Watch me live on the edge.

I'm like Terminator. If Terminator had lactose intolerance.

I've had the worst tooth-ache for several days and finally got a dentist appointment, only to find out that I will have to replace two of my teeth with porcelain replicas. Not something in gold that might give me that sexy pirate-with-pmt-vibe, but porcelain ones. I feel like a cyborg, but not the cool kind - more like the one they use in schools to practice CPR. Anyway, the reason I've been absent from blogging for a while is that I was kidnapped. By terrorists. Or by awesome cable TV and being constantly semi-sick, I can't remember which one. The problem is that films have implanted an idea that diseases in some way are romantic, dramatic and capable of making people painstakingly pale and beautiful. This is lies and boulderdash: there is no way that one could be sexy whilst having vast amounts of mucus cascading out of one's nose and throat, and instead of the Victorian noble woman exhausted by restrictive corsets fainting on a divan, you lie curled up under six blankets yelling at your boyfriend to fetch you some more chocolate pudding because YOU ARE FUCKING DYING. I've always wondered how the traditional romantic "the hero is dying from a chronic disease that only makes him paler and turns him into Val Kilmer" disease-films would look if you simply switched the sexy diseases for the less sexy, more realistic ones - how would the romance in Moulin Rouge turn out if Satine was plagued with stomach flu instead of tuberculosis? Would Philadelphia be as heartbreaking if Andrew was dying from pancreatic cancer? Would Rain Man be so sweet if he suffered from tourettes, or the Phantom of the Opera so hot if the reason he was hiding his face was due to the fact that he suffered from bad acne? Would Baudelaire still be as mysterious if he had obesity fat flaps instead of syphilis? Would the fainting ladies of the 19th century still be as daunting if they had incontinence? My point is that sickness is incapable of being sexy, and that's how it should be: diseases kill us in the end, and dying isn't sexy or romantic or noble, despite how desperately we want it to be that way.

I'm not sure what purpose this post is supposed to have, I'm just sick and depressed and fed up with having to see the film and book-industry feeding off of depression and diseases - Goethe was a big attention whore who ruined the calm sanctity of depression for everyone.

The worst thing is that my sadness isn't heartbreaking or deep or eternal, it just makes me crave a lot of white bread. This is so going into my screenplay "Loathing and bread loafs" - a 19th century drama between a poor, dying painter and his carbohydrates. I'm going to be rich.

Yes. Our relationship is exactly like game of thrones.

Me after watching Game of Thrones too many times: Wow, Daenerys Targaryen eats an entire horse heart in order to prove her love for her husband.Why won't you eat an entire heart to prove your love to me?
Boyfriend: Hang on, I ate mozzarella last night for you.
Me: You are truly a dothraki soldier.
Boyfriend: I really don't like cheese.

The sacrifices are endless.

This is what happens when I have Game of Thrones-abstinence, boredom and access to photoshop at the same time.