Rhino: Return of Masterchief

Morgan and Byrne Mission Statement

Randomly Blogging about whatever the hell we want, from the strange to wacky, popular to obscure we will continue seeking out the stories that we're interested in. Writing about our lives and families, situations and events. We don't care to motivate, persuade or inform we just enjoy blogging. Our only rule is we NEVER blog about work. We do hope you enjoy reading or irreverent and occasionally entertaining blog and hope you return often and leave a comment (our girl loves comments).

May 24, 2007 - 1130 pm I found myself standing in line with 300 disheveled gamers awaiting the midnight release of the highly anticipated Halo 3 by Bungie. I was there to obtain a coveted copy of the game for my 14 yr old son who was soundly asleep at home. As I stood there choking on the second hand smoke of all the young gamers surrounding me, I was awkwardly aware I was the oldest person there. They were a motley group of long haired, slouching cross sample of America's youth...Was this America's future? As I inched forward toward our shared goal, I thought about how I had been playing video games before they had even been born. Shoot! I was the O.G. (original gamer)! I had cut my teeth on Pong and the early version of the Atari console. I remembered long hours of Missile Command and fighting aliens with the primitive graphics of Zaxxon. The anticipation of trying to get Frogger across the street and over the logs to the other side of the river seems like yesterday. I loved gaming and was only to happy to get a Super Nintendo entertainment system for my daughter...It was a good excuse! Because I got to play too. As a toddler, my son used to just watch us play, he didn't want to play. He was content to just sit and watch...I didn't know but he was learning. Each year the graphics would get better. We graduated to Sony Playstation and I became an expert at Gran Turismo Racing.
Play Station 2, Xbox, Xbox 360. Over the years I've found myself playing less and less. Slow reflexes and games so complicated I can't get through the Online directory have relegated me to watching my son play more often then not. Games can be very addictive and I have had to be very strict as to how much my kids play. Education and school are their main focus and I have had to control the privilege of playing, limiting them to only weekends. Leveraging game play into better grades was probably the best thing I could have done for them.

According to Microsoft, first-day sales of Halo 3 reached $170 million, making it the highest grossing entertainment product within 24 hours of release ever. The performance beat the previous record setter, predecessor Halo 2, which earned $125 million within 24-hours after its launch. Halo 3 has beaten other records as well. More than 1.7 million copies of Halo 3 were pre-ordered in the U.S., making it the fastest pre-selling game in U.S. history. The game also drew over a million Xbox Live members to play online in the first 20-hours, making it the biggest day for Xbox Live gaming in history.

Reality Bites

yeh. while you see all that plastic prettiness in SL, here's what is really going on on the other side of the computer screen.

Aqua - Barbie Girl

second life? aqua pretty much nailed it in 1997.

OurGirl: Come on Barbie, Let's Go Party!

right now for me, SL has been nothing more than playing with barbies. take a look at my avatar in SL. she is so buff and taller than i am real life. i dig her noncorporate 'do, but i kept true to real life and gave her a good spanking of freckles. i also added a bit of bags under her eyes, since sleep is a premium for me in RL. one thing i cant figure out is the shirt length. SL loves the bippie top. heh. my avatar is pensively gazing out at the ocean in a stranger's mod home on some island. she wishes for land to build a scale shoestring vineyard, complete with a tasting room. my avatar would then have vodcasts of shoestring vineyard life to show the other avatars and would offer racks of wine to decorate homes--like this mod pad. or offer single bottles of wine with a glass and a script that would have the avatars swirling the wine glass, sniffing and tasting. she's pretty ambitious but doesn't know where to start.

sort of like real life.

right now my avatar is stretched out on a hammock...or blanket...or snoozing on a couch...or lounging on a bed of pillows in a tower somewhere. she gets more sleep than i'll see. my approach to SL is so dopey. i feel sort of responsible for making my avatar comfortable while i'm out. so i find her snoozing spots. people have been dropping off notecards with invites to clubbing in the evening. hah! puhleeze. with my schedule, there is no way this avatar will ever be able to go clubbing. i just started SL during a perfect storm of home, academic, and professional activities. ive been limited exploring different islands and experimenting with camping (ugh) for cash or even better--dancing! i gots me some mad russian dance skills, yeh. took me a while to figure out how to stop, though. picture the avatar walking around and performing russian kicks at the same time. comedy and chaos ensues! with my meager earnings i purchased a few tidbits i immediately regretted. the hottie school girl outfit? even my avatar feels she's mutton as lamb in that ensemble. oh, and hair! that's so crazy, man. you put on a bald cap and then try on the hair. i get it working right, but the styles aren't quite right for my avatar. then again, i wasnt much good at playing with barbies. all my barbies looked pretty much like how they came out of the packaging. i was totally at a loss with all that mad hair. do all barbies come from texas?

which makes me remember Aqua's song: Barbie Girl. ah, Aqua! how refreshing i find your effervescent euro dance music! nostalgia hit me and i utube'd the group. what i found is pretty much how i've come to think of SL. first, you'll see the group aqua. that's SL. the next utube is pretty much what is happening on the other side of the computer screen. real life isn't pretty or for the faint hearted, but damn its funny.

Morgan: Confessions of a Second Life Junkie

Most of my friends are playing Fantasy Football...Not me, for the last week I have been exploring the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) virtual world of Second Life(SL). It was pretty easy to get started, first I registered and paid a small fee to participate. I than downloaded the software to run on my laptop. Our Girl had been talking about SL for a couple of days and I had been reading increasingly frequent stories in the media of people getting rich in SL, so my interest was already piqued. Last year I had read the highly acclaimed Sci-Fi novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson published in 1992 He was almost prophetic in descriptions of "the Street or Metaverse" a virtual world were people lived and conducted business. Like many postmodernist novels, Snow Crash has a chaotic structure that might confuse readers unfamiliar with the genre. It contains many references to history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, geography and philosophy. Set in a world with a political-economic system that has been radically transformed, the novel examines religion along with its social importance, perception of reality versus virtual reality, and the violent and physical nature of humanity.

Influence on the World Wide Web

While Stephenson was not the first to apply the Sanskrit term avatar to online virtual bodies (Habitat did that), the success of Snow Crash popularized the term to the extent that avatar is now the de facto term for this concept in computer games and on the World Wide Web.

Metaverse-like "worlds" in reality include There, Second Life, The Palace, Uru, Dotsoul, Active Worlds and Blaxxun (originally Black Sun prior to being sued by Sun Microsystems). Some massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) also resemble the Metaverse.

According to its creators, the computer game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst was inspired by Snow Crash. This does not refer to the story or content of the game (which is deeply rooted in the D'ni/Myst universe), but rather the format of the multiplayer environment, Uru Live.

Many virtual globe programs including NASA World Wind and Google Earth bear a resemblance to the "Earth" software developed by the Central Intelligence Corporation in Snow Crash. One Google Earth co-founder claimed that Google Earth was modeled after Snow Crash, while another co-founder said it was inspired by Powers of Ten.^[10]

Stephenson's vision of the Library of Congress or simply the 'Library' bears a striking resemblance to Wikipedia. In the story, millions of users are constantly uploading fragments of information to a searchable database. Stephenson's concept of the Library differs notably from Wikipedia however, in that users must pay to download most information.^[11] Indeed the novel refers to several people, including Hiro Protagonist, who pursue a career in uploading information in the hopes that it will one day be of value. Although it is unclear whether Stephenson may actually have influenced the development of Wikipedia he clearly predicted the concept.

So it didn't take much to convince me to Log on...I was already hooked. Now when I get home from my real job in my first life, I think...OK I gotta go to work in my second life and make some money. You need a lot of money in Second Life to own property...or build a home. I like the idea of building something of value in virtual reality...but right now I feel like a homeless person in Second Life drifting from Job to Job, Island to Island.

OurGirl: Confessions of a Magazine Junkie

From the "I Want to be a Child that has the Right to Choose series," Juo Gin, China

I'm a terrible magazine junkie. i love, love, love racks and racks of printed publications and our local borders bookstore has a particularly satisfying book rack. Way back, about 1998, i was an avid reader of ARTnews. Its a magazine all about the art scene—trends, profiles, the ins and outs of the art world—really fascinating stuff and a world totally apart from my existence. i was flipping through an issue when i saw an ad placed by Flanders Contemporary Art, promoting the work of guo jin. i remember having a very distinct, gut reaction seeing his series, I Want to be the Child that has the Right to Choose. i decided right then I would own one of those paintings and that was an odd idea in contrast to my background. why where i'm from, people just didnt go around buying original oil paintings from the chinese advant garde movement. i remember my mom trying to convince me it would be a bad idea. she felt they looked like abortions. i couldnt be dissuaded. i would own one. i contacted flanders, spoke to a rep and they sent me photos of the work. among the images of little boys and girls, i saw her: a portrait of a remote little girl, dreamily contemplating a flower and dressed in historical garb. out of the four or five paintings they had in the series, she was mine. i scrapped, freelanced, used tax return funds and got the money to flanders. she came in a wood box, carefully protected and i refuse to have her framed. i prefer the apple green background to visually ooze out onto the wall. she has adorned a prominent wall wherever i have called home, safe from UV rays and sun bleaching. she is beautiful. i have never regret the purchase. after a while, i have tried to find a few of her brothers and sisters, but sadly, the prices are now far beyond my reach.

here is background information regarding Guo Jin, and his brother:

Guo Wei and Guo Jin, born in 1960 and 1964, respectively, come from Chengdu, a city in southwest China; both were educated at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Art in Chongqing. They are leading members of a group of Sichuan artists who have been at the forefront of recent artistic developments in China. Old enough to remember the Cultural Revolution, the brothers, like everyone else in China, have been affected by the one-family, one-child policy of the Mao era: the elder has made his only daughter's development a major theme in his art. Both frequently depict children.

Guo Jin says of his art that it is a “reflection and contemplation of man’s naiveté”, that in representing children as he does he wants to try to retrieve the “beauty of the idealism that we were unaware of but that once we had.”

Freedom is another important element in Guo Jin’s work. Freedom is expressed in this child subject matters, seen being very nimble and playful in their movements. Again, this also touches on the new freedom of creation which now exists in the Chinese artistic communities that Guo Jin can take Chinese icons such as the emperor, the PLA soldier, the Red Guard and Lei Feng (the model communist comrade widely used in propaganda campaigns), or western imports such as Zorro or Batman, and use them playfully. Misuse of national icons or use of foreign symbols could have resulted in severe repercussions under the unrelenting regime of the Cultural Revolution. This series of works is also about imagination and the freedom of choice facing a child, its freedom to choose what it wants to be, again a novelty in a country that until recently decided for its young what they should study.

Rhino: America's Melting Pot

I recently watched a documentary of the trials of Ameri-Asians living in Vietnam. Thousands of young adults of mixed heritage have grown up experiencing poverty and discrimination in their own country. They are known as "children of the dust" Not being accepted by the Vietnamese has caused a lot of these individuals to emigrate to Europe and America, however many still live in Vietnam. While not entirely their fault, when the Communist took over in 1975, many young women abandoned these children fearing retribution from the government and communities.
The documentary really made an impression on me as my daughter and son are Ameri-Asian also.
However they are very lucky to have been raised under different circumstances. With the support of my wife and I they are growing up into fine adults (I hope.) When I first got married I knew that even though we were in America, we needed to live in a diverse community were they would be accepted and free of discrimination. Northern Virginia was the perfect locale to raise my "mixed" family. It had a sufficient cluster community of Vietnamese Americans to support my wife's needs. She was able to shop for Asian foods, purchase vietnamese videos for her entertainment and make and maintain friendships within her community. It was beneficial for my children also because they were exposed to both cultures and grew up aware of their heritage. Northern Virginia is so diverse with people from all over the world, making their homes here, my family didn't stand out as an oddity they blended into the American melting pot and were free of overt discrimination. My children have more opportunities and better education here than if we had chosen a more rural location in America to build our family.
I was recently made aware of this when a friend of my wife visited our home from a small town outside Syracuse, NY. She is of mixed heritage, her father being a French Officer in Vietnam before the Americans took over. But what really struck me was, how unhappy she was living in "white" community isolated from the very infrastructure my wife used. In a small community she has had trouble finding employment and the "american dream" has been more of a nightmare.
I thank God my family has been more fortunate than others, my heart goes out to the Diaspora and the plight of all Ameri-Asians.

OurGirl: Best of Boys, Vol. 1

out on the road today i saw a deadhead sticker on a cadillac. a little voice inside my head said don't look back, you can never look back.

boys of summer, don henley

sons are surprising animals. they are rowdy, dirty lovers of fart and burping sounds one minute, then turn around, kiss you tenderly and declare you the most beautiful mother of doom (the ultimate 4 year-old compliment). I consider this even more tender due to the fact boy2 had just kissed me through the snotty, allergy-ridden haze currently polluting my immediate environment. allergies! i depise you as much as morgan despises poison ivy. to be a mother is privilege, enough; to be the mother of the boys of mine—heaven.

with summer ending, i find myself watching the boys carefully and soaking them in. a friend brought her mother over to the farmhouse this past weekend. even at 90 years old, she was observing my boys in that wistful, hungry fashion many women have when starved for little ones. the desire for babies never leaves a woman, so i want to have many, many opportunities to look back. recently, boy1 and i had the opportunity to eat lunch with the rhino, son of rhino, she who must be obeyed, bullfrog, and walsh. it was an event. i hope my boys grow up as close as the rhino&bullfrog. they make me laugh hard.

morgan gave you a top ten list of movies. here is my top ten list of all things boy:

10. dips in pools are considered baths.
09. if the deer in the creek is dead, poke the eyes. then make sure to tell momma what it felt like.
08. the ability to fall asleep in any position. this includes standing. right after they insisted they are NOT tired.
07. beverage of choice: a suicide. its a mixture of every fountain drink/slurpee flavor.
06. making forts out of all available bedding and every chair in the house.
05. fart/burping jokes. especially with daddy. he's the master. also, wrestling.
04. having momma fill up their mouth with reddi-whip in a can until they look like a donut and it comes out their noses 'cause they are laughing too hard.
03. home-made cards with poems
02. telling momma secrets and wild schemes
01. sticky/watery/bloody kisses while they are laughing/crying/angry. sometimes all at once.

i was able to stump my boys recently, of which i'm proud. they are pretty clever beasties and are quick with a retort. this is the question that stumped them:

which is better, ice cream or doughnuts?
are you thinking about it? you can't cheat and say beer is better.