Life, Gaming and the World: Reasons for Absecence

Hello all once again!

Some of you may have noticed the massive space of time since my last post, it is mostly due to the things that comprise the title of my blog: Life, Gaming, and the World.

Once I left Washington DC where I started my blog I had very little motivation to write. I found that my opinions were better served in an interpersonal forum than in an anonymous one. However, my situation has changed and I feel comfortable coming back. Now that I have finished my final year of University, and I have much more free time to write again. Currently I am studying abroad in Granada Spain which gives me an amazing opportunity to write.

I also became incredibly busy with a great number of releases of games last fall and this spring. This made it quite difficult, as you can imagine, to find time to write. During the fall I delved into the dungeons and realms of Torchlight 2 where my engineer and I slew an inordinate amount of enemies. In the spring I renewed my love of MOBA's and split pushed League of Legends and DotA 2, tanking my way to a mediocre win/loss ratio. Finally this summer I caved and bought a copy of Civilization V; best decision I have ever made.

The world continued to spin in my absence; both in and out of control. Syria, Gay marriage legalized in Minnesota, Affordable Care Act closer to implementation, Sandy Hook, reelection of Barack Obama, GOP shenanigans, Michelle Bachmann not seeking reelection, Bengazi and many others. One debate that will eventually make its way into a blog post consumed my year; the gun control debate in the USA. After the shootings this past year I had many a beautiful conversation with friends, acquaintances and family creating a nuanced picture of the issue that I didn't have before. The nice thing however, was that most people I talked to no matter their persuasion on the issue thought that the NRA were idiots. Score one for me.

Thank you for reading and coming back for more. With a year of experiences and thoughts both behind and ahead of me I look forward to writing again!

The Jungle Welcomes You!

Welcome to the Blogosphere!

Alright, so this is a big step for me. Many of the people that know me well, often find their ears and patience tried by my curmudgeonly attitude towards newfangled gadgets. However, after reading a blog post here, I realized that not everything on the internet has to be without meaning. I was under the assumption that blogs only ever talked about nothing or things that only pertained to themselves. Now, there is no need to throw things. I understand the error of my ways now! That being said, the purpose of this blog is to relay my thoughts on a variety of topics; for my first blog I don't really want to limit myself too much - I just need to be writing. I will endeavor to write as scholarly, and with sources, as often as I can or when I find something of interest.

So I've given you my rationale for writing, but I have only hinted at what this blog is about. I'm going to preface the rest of this post with the following: I'm a giant nerd. This blog is about the four things that I find most important in life, as illustrated in the title of the blog. WHAT?! you say, but there are only three things listed at the top! That is not so, possibly the most important thing up there is the word valknut.

Valknut is a word of Norse origin which, as I was told and discovered, means a variety of different things. It is most commonly associated with fate and the nine worlds that composed Norse mythology. Additionally, because it is associated with Odin, the All-father, it also means strength of spirit and resolve - and a little bit of warrior's code. Unfortunately it has also come into use in white-supremacy groups in both Europe and the US, but that is not a reason why I chose this. The valknut for the purposes of this blog is a uniting force - the fate of all things brings us together, and the fact that it represents some of the core values I hold dear make it a perfect way to describe what I want to say. Under this heading I will be talking about morals, values, sometimes fate and  fantastic tales that I hear. Source

The second, and possibly the most important part of this blog is about life: the pursuit of and the trials thereof. This section will cover things like relationships - if that ever comes up - experiences and I would also like to lump in stories from my life or others that don't fit into any of the other categories. Life is full of stories and interesting facts, we can't ignore them or forget them. What is most evident from this section would be that there is always something new to do, or something new to learn  every day - don't squander it.

Thirdly is gaming. As you may have guess from my bio and the other posts you see here, I am a huge nerd. That being said, I am very particular and sometimes very vocal about what I like and don't like: so I am putting all of the cool stuff that I find and that I want to talk about here. I am an avid tabletop gamer; both for wargames and for RPG's so you will find references to those quite often. I also do a fair amount of computer gaming and some console as well - and these references can be found here.

Finally we come to the world: this is where you will hear me gripe a lot. Everything that happens in politics I will put here, so anything that I find that is worth praising or ranting about will go here. I can be very vocal and visceral with my reactions to things; so don't expect a whole lot of minced phrases here. To preface this section, and save some people a headache, I am a liberal. I'm not a commie pinko by any means - but I definitely don't vote conservatively. But, politics are not the only things that happen in the world; there are also innovations in technology or media and as a foreign language nut I will have interesting things to be found here. Also, any traveling I do will be found here.

I hope that this gives you a solid idea of what to find here on my blog. If you have and questions or you really want to gripe at me my email is posted on the blog. Thanks for reading and I hope you find something interesting.