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Yesterday, I went to this. It was an event for players of NDS Pokémon titles to receive a legendary Shaymin and meet up with fellow players to have some fun.

I won’t go into too much detail, but it’s enough to say that the day filled me with a special kind of happiness and satisfaction that only comes from meeting a slew of new people just because of a single shared interest. It’s the kind of feeling I had to a lesser extent while getting to know the Warwick Atheists. I also experienced something similar when I went to Hemel Hempstead in 2005 for that year’s Click Convention [I am in the group photo linked on that page, that's how I looked in '05], but of course I was too young to really appreciate it like I appreciated yesterday.

Some more things might come of it, too. I won’t say too much now in case nothing comes of it and it all ends up being a massive disappointment, but let’s just say that I got the phone number of some guy.

Sorry I’ve been quiet here recently. Hope everyone is enjoying the Easter holidays and I’ll be back on the internet proper within a week.

I know I’ve bitched at him lots over the years. But he did give away a badge. And now he’s on the exec of another society, offering all his Sam Corcoran-y-ness to those heathens at Good Food Soc… but, hey, I was bored on a delayed train today and remembering this little interchange kept me amused for a while:

To WA, from Sam

RAW asked us to come and talk on air about the situation with the award. It was decided today that whilst Andrew is attached to the on-air discussion we do not wish to be a part of it, owing to his comments made on RAW in march (such as suggesting that we should be kicked out of SocFed) along with his encouragement for RAW News to cite the ToolChronicles weblog as an official source of information regarding the society. The following is the message I just sent to him:

To “Andrew”, from Sam

I am afraid that Warwick Atheists has chosen to decline this invitation to talk on Raw Insight. This decision was made by a collection of WA exec members who felt that based on insultingly misinformed comments made on air by you (on Friday 14 March, the day SocFed voiced their decision to revoke our award), we do not feel particularly inclined to participate in any discussion of the matter whilst you are involved.
I hope The Boar’s coverage of the situation, appearing next week I believe, will inform you adequately of our society’s position. We may be interested in participating in related discussions on RAW in the near future as things develop, however this will be with the provision that you are not involved.

PEW PEW PEW.

The rest of the exchange should probably be kept private, so it’s in the other post. The password is the same one that ’su468′ uses to log on to the SUNION computers.

Yeah, yeah, ‘grats and everything.

Just don’t, you know… get shot.

“All he did was win a few Formula One races, why are they making him President?”

Yeah, I donated to a fucking CHARITY.

How selfless am I?

Nine of your Great British Pounds, every month, could be forked out for a lot of things. Maybe you could sponsor some charity? That’s great and all, but why not spend it on something a little more tangible? Regular expenditure like that could also just as easily be going into a savings account, but £9 is a little bit, well… little for that. It’s better off spent, I’d say.

City of Heroes

What if you could design your own superhero from scratch, with incredible flexibility? What if you then took your superhero around the streets and districts of Paragon City, a bustling metropolis rife with crime? What if your hero earned new powers during his or her lifetime, being able to take on more threatening villains? What if your hero could team up with other heroes on a short-term basis to take on even bigger tasks? And what if your hero was inducted into a SuperGroup, with long-term benefits and allies and a chance to build up a super base?

I’ve never played an MMORPG before. RPGs in themselves are a little daunting from the point of view of a player who is used to running in, shooting up the place and moving on, with little regard for what is the core aspect in an RPG: the character improving with experience.

I did enjoy my brief stint with Morrowind, the third Elder Scrolls installment, and Pokémon is always good fun. But this is number one on the list of MMORPGs, an otherwise untapped genre.

Well, to start with, there is a lot of negativity associated with MMOs that comes from the poor public opinion of World of Warcraft and its players (I have heard some awful, prejudiced things). It could be because of the attention drawn by the people who devote their lives to playing it, but I don’t want to discuss the merits or drawbacks of that game, I want to talk about this one.

I’m going to give a quick run-down of gameplay. If you’re a big player of this kind of game and something that I’m explaining is obvious to you because it’s in every RPG without fail, just remember what I’ve kept saying over and over: first time, here, so bear the fuck with me.

Gameplay

As a hero, you’re registered with the police force of Paragon City and thrown in. There are two things you can do after the tutorial: find some crime and stop it or proceed to your contacts to be given missions.

You get assigned missions via contacts in the city. From detectives to scientists, everybody has got something for you to take care of. The burden of responsibility is on you, but so are the rewards that hard work brings. On your travels about the city’s districts, you’ll see crime in progress, including street brawls, muggings and break-ins.

To kill the bad guys, you use the superpowers you picked at character creation, powers that come from pool sets that expand with more choices as you increase in level.

One of my favourite things about this game is the come-and-go feel of teaming up. Anyone can form a casual team of people of similar levels. What’s more is that people level up at approximately the same rate. Some will steamroller ahead, but most people will be within a range of two or three levels over a long time, meaning you will team up with them over and over. You’ll start seeing familiar characters in the way you’d see familiar people around you in real life. Teaming up in itself is fair; experience and goodies are split fairly between all participants.

People might not be the most intelligent you’ll ever meet, but they sure are friendly. The new and inexperienced are receptive to advice and the veterans are happy to dish it out. You won’t be shouted at for not knowing everything there is to know about the game, and everyone is very polite, offering congratulations and other little courtesies that you don’t often find in online communities.

This is Tom Hanks saying, if you’re going to pick an MMORPG to play, why not this one?

Fitness is not really an important thing to me. I am not fit, I’m barely in good health, but it’s something that I am not worried about.

However, objectively speaking, it’s almost universally considered a good thing to get some exercise every now and again.

Idea One

This was an off-the-cuff Tweet a few days ago, but I postulated that, after the claim that irregular exercise does more harm than good (fuck you if you want a source for this claim, it’s just something I heard), irregular overeating of nasty food should do more good than harm, right? Since it’s been drummed into us that a poor diet (or in the words of Stuart Prebble, unwise eating) is the opposite to plenty of a fitness-oriented lifestyle.

So, my instructions to you are to change nothing, but every few weeks you should make a point to gorge yourself on a KFC Mega Bucket. Don’t think about it, just do it. Let me know if you’re still alive after 12 months.

Idea Two

It’s not that I wouldn’t like to be fitter and healthier, but I don’t have the inclination when I can amuse myself far more readily by not moving at all. That’s the internet, I suppose. BUT, that’s not to say that I wouldn’t mind being forced to motivate. So, I have come up with an amazing invention that, in an ideal world, a budding electronic engineer with time on his hands and a lust for charitable (i.e., unpaid) work (or possibly a budding entrepreneur with an eye for the masochistic demographic) would develop for me. I haven’t yet come up for a snappy name for it, so I will start with its description and leave the name as a blank space for you to fill in.

Something small and electronic, about the size of those Tamagotchi toys we all loved back when we were 90s kids. Clips onto a belt and acts as an unsensitive pedometer that responds only to jogging or running, not just walking (because walking as an exercise form is lame), and other stuff like running around kicking a ball with your friends, or a game of some raquet-based sport. It clocks up steps. It also has an iPod-like docking vagina in the bottom of it, and when you plug it into its USB docking station, the matching software on the computer will unlock the internet or computer games (exact settings still to be worked out) while counting down the steps taken.

Other things that will charge the counter can be hooking it into weights machines that add points for every lift or whatever. It can also be attached to bikes and count up distance cycled for more points, or if you’re one of those people who hates cheap alternatives (like running or cycling outside of a gym, for free), they can be jacked into treadmills or exercise bikes. Rack up points by not being a lazy cunt, then spend the points on your well-deserved lazy-cuntishness. Great stuff.

The person who names it best gets 100 starter points:

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An often sad backstory followed by some life-changing “event” will make one.

You can identify them from their alliterated names (Bruce Banner, Clark Kent, Peter Parker, David Dunn, etc.).

They have a hero identity and a normal identity.

They have a love interest.

They believe they are fighting for justice.

I give you: Benjamin Barker; a once-humble barber who returns from his unfair exile a new man: Sweeney Todd.

When learning of his tragic wife’s poisoning and having his daughter abducted, he vows to “practice” his talents on the throats of those who “deserve to die.”

For in this world, “there are two kinds of men and only two:” “the one staying put in his proper place” (i.e., the good guys) and “the one with his foot in the other one’s face,” (i.e., bad people), and “the lives of the wicked should be made brief.”

Sweeney Todd is a dark and broken man, but a hero nonetheless, and it’s time we realised this and praised him for who he truly is.

Edinburgh

This is a wonderful historic city. The buildings are such wonders to look at; the floor is bumpy and the walls are worn and aging. But what’s even better than that is the amazing Scottish pride that they have everywhere.

The Scottish stereotypes aren’t clichéd at all, really. People stroll down the streets in kilts and tartan, there were bagpipes playing and there was plenty of ginger. Not to mention the charm of the Edinburgh drunks once the sun went down.

My goodness, it was steep! I’ve been to Exeter, the steepest place in England, but even that doesn’t compare. The hill upon which Edinburgh Castle sits was a brilliant climb in the warm afternoon sun when we disembarked from the train at Waverley.

The castle itself was remarkably intimidating, from the sheer face, to the cannons, right down to the admission price! So, we didn’t go inside. But I heard from a source of unstable reliability that it’s filled with glorifying lies about the Scots anyway.

Secular Students

The Edinburgh group who hosted the conference are Humanists. I didn’t go to this conference knowing a great deal about this worldview, so I was happy to be taught about it. It turns out that their individual viewpoints didn’t really differ that much from the views of our society (branded ‘Atheists’), but the avenue of Humanism offered more options.

Humanism

As described in the inside cover of Humanitie, the Humanist Society of Scotland’s publication, Humanism is:

[...] a diverse movement with ancient roots that reflects the views of millions of people around the world. Stated simply, Humanists believe that we can lead good and worthwhile lives guided by reason and compassion rather than religion or superstition, and that there are more things that unite humanity than divide it.

Paraphrased, they’re atheists plus. The ‘plus’ bit is what allows them to instate things like Humanist chaplains (and equivalent), one of whom we met and were spoken to by. It affords the University of Edinburgh Humanist Society a place inside their university’s chaplaincy and lets them position a godless representative inside for a faithless alternative for pastorial care.

Whether you think this is a good or bad thing is irrelevant, since if there is a demand for a Humanist chaplain (or equivalent), then one should be provided. At present, though, this is primarily a Scottish position. None of the English societies (whether proclaimed ‘atheist’ or ‘Humanist’) had much (if anything) to do with their chaplaincies, which is an important point to make.

I personally don’t believe there’s any call for Humanism amongst the people in our university. But if there is, they’re very welcome to come and see Warwick Atheists.

Secular Conference

This was the meat of the visit. Six different student societies were represented:

• University of Edinburgh Humanist Society (our hosts)
• Warwick Atheists
• Leeds Atheist Society
• Oxford Secular Society
• Keele Humanist Group
• Durham University Humanists

We heard introductory presentations from all of these groups, and it was brilliant to see the work of other groups as well as present the stuff that we had done.

We then got on to unifying ourselves. We decided on some short term goals and charged the very gracious Leeds members with drafting a constitution, which would be read over by a lawyer provided by the British Humanist Association.

And we finally decided on a name! We’re (presently) going to call ourselves AHS informally, the full title being a bit of a struggle: The National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies.

Sorry it’s so small, there’s no easily (within one Google Images search) accessible high-res picture of the National Secular Society’s logo to steal.

There’s more to come as this develops.

Ghosts

The really big stuff happened last night - we went on an Edinburgh ghost tour. It was called the Terror Tour, and took us into a haunted vault after talks on witchcraft and torture.

On the second level, we were told the story of Wiccan spellcasters who accidentally opened the doors wide to the demon realm. To help out the situation, they trapped the demons inside the pentagram on the floor and fucking legged it. The circle that marked the outer layer of protection was left marked by a ring of stones, and inside these stones is contained a pillar of “negative energy” from the demons. People have been jerked into the circle, we were told. Jerked and scratched. And of course, when we were offered the chance to enter the circle, we did, with legendary Scottish Humanist Stuart Ritchie yelling “Atheist, Humanist and Secular students of the UK, unite!”

Still no signs of demon fights yet, but I will keep you posted.

Warwick Atheists

I am confident in saying that I am the most involved member of the society. This is justified by the amount of and variation of the source of my collection of NSS badges.

Recruiting members

Charity stall

Exec member

AHS Conference

Still looking for love? Look no further…

If you are interested in a man:

With a good sense of humour:

Who is clever:

And fun-loving:

Good with kids:

And loves to travel:

WE HAVE YOUR GUY!

Just stop looking.