Destruction of Reputation

Lo and behold how the mighty have fallen! Yes, we are quoting parts of the bible today. It is that epic. Who is then the mighty that has fallen? If you know anything about swedish politics at the moment you would know that it is the Social Democratic party. Once reigning supreme without question as the governmental party. Of the last 100 years 70 of them being at the helms, carefully navigating world war 2 between the powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and continuing in the Cold War with the Warsaw Pact and NATO on all sides (except our eastern neighbor Finland) and lastly the economic crisis in the 90's and the terrorist in the first years of the new millennium. Producing men and women of power and respect across all parties. There was Hansson, Erlander, Sträng, Palme, Feldt, Carlsson, Persson, Sahlin and Lindh. They had visions, ideas and a way to realize those dreams. Today the party is a broken shadow of its former self. A party that once gathered a support of at least 40 % in election after election is now happy that they only achieved 27,7 % because it could have been much worse. This is not the sign of a healthy party.

It actually gets worse since the party in itself is caught in an internal civil war between the left and right fractions. The left at the moment having the higher ground, since they were able to push a more left-leaning candidate to the position as party leader, are now appearing to go for a purge of the unfaithful within the party. There is fifth columns, traitors, heretics and bought by the capitalistic forces of evil who are sniping from within the party to bring them down, or at least that's what they say. It wouldn't surprise me though. Those on the right side of the conflict... I don't know what they are saying. Most of them seems to feel despaired and even thinking of leaving the party due to the prosecutions from their antagonists. The War of the Roses is in full bloom. Is it on the verge of splitting the party or are they gonna cleanse the air to be able to gather themselves and go forth stronger than before?

Who is then responsible for this destructive force within the party? Is is the new leader Juholt? Juholt who appeared out of nowhere from the chambers of the parliaments defence committee, being there from 1994 without leaving any print of what he did and being overlooked by Persson as a viable minister for 10 years? A man who's rhetoric echoes back to the 1970, but without the class and expertise that Palme filled his speeches with? Juholt who makes promises and changes his stance multiple times on questions over the course of a week or even a day? No, he's just the symptom, a manifestation of the real disease. 

This is a party that needs a strong leader to point out the direction they are heading, a party that saw itself more as a temple for all ho shared the fundamental values, but didn't cast you out for your opinion on certain issues as long as the ultimate goal was in your heart, the social democratic society. That vision doesn't exist any more since it was realized in 1969 and no one has been able to form another political project as important as Folkhemmet in Sweden. The political issues that followed was mostly taken care of by a referendum. That is how they solved the question of nuclear power, European Union, EMU and some others. The special about the three I mentioned is that the party itself is still divided about those questions. Or at least the members, the congress decision is no, yes and yes. So it is a surprise that they have a leader who says yes/no to every question and then changes it? It doesn't help that we are leaving the ideological battle for the political issues of the day, meaning they must decide upon what they think in them all, probably alienating some. Will they succeed? Maybe, although from my own perspective they would probably have to shrink much more, gather the few who stayed and form straight answers in every question and follow it and from there gather support than the current situation in trying to appease all sides. An example, when they were quiet after 2006 only giving vague descriptions on what they are trying to accomplish, S had 45 % of the supporters behind them, but when they gave their budget proposal in May 2010 the support evaporated since people didn't agree on the proposals and it was hardly anything different than the ruling coalitions proposal. Conclusion, S is transparent in the wrong way since no one knows what they stand for and their leader can't point with his whole hand.   Doesn't help that the election of him was so un-transparent that itself become a joke.

The Fall From Heaven

Been a while since I wrote about Swedish politics, or politics overall. That's mostly due to the only thing that seems to be in the media is Juholt, the Social Democratic leader. Cleared from the original charges of taking out money from a second apartment from the taxpayer since there was no rules around it (which anyone working at a job outside of politics would probably been charged with fraud or something like that, and everyone knows this). Then we had the double car expenditures. What that amounted to I don't know. We have policies from the party left and right and they are withdrawn a couple days later and then put forward again. The party don't want to take a budget debate because they have to stand next to SD with the government parties together on the other side. It's a circus. It doesn't help that people he stepped on to get to that position clearly backstab him over and over. A great example would be their former prospected finance minister Thomas Östros. In an interview some couple of weeks ago he got the question if he had faith in their leader. What was his answer? He had faith in the committee that appointed him. That is one of the more subtler backstabs I've ever seen. And media is on it like rabid dogs. All high-up social democratic representatives gets this question and I think only one or two said yes clearly without pointing toward the committee. How he survived the first week of the scandal I don't know.

Still, it has continued since nothing else seems to be able to overshadow this person. Last Friday it was time again when he was being interviewed by the norwegian Skavlan on his talk show. I didn't watch it because, well I've almost stopped caring about Juholt and it was a long time ago since I watched Skavlan. Still, things we're able to pop up. Apparently he's so competitive that he couldn't continue to play against his sons since they began beating him and he also keep a black book of sorts were he puts the names of his enemies. I don't know if that the best things to say when someone got it rough, he don't like losing and he will write down every injustice against him. People prefer if you go out as a recovering alcoholic or something like that, a flaw people can take pity and so on. Competitiveness and rancorous is not any of them. It doesn't help that he apparently was shot-down really hard by one of the other guest (a swedish-norwegian if anyone cares, Linn Ullmann). He travelled around Sweden asking for forgiveness for the mistakes he made, but maybe in a slip of the tongue he admitted he always thought he did the right thing, Ullmann countered with that when she ask for forgiveness she knows she did the wrong thing. Some have analyzed this and maybe it's just a communication miss between the two, but it doesn't make things better if people can misinterpret it like that. If anyone wants to read from both sides read these articles, one accusing everyone else for bullying Juholt and the other more or less acknowledging the "knock-out" Ullmann gave him. The comments are a bit more harsher, but probably more informative (at some points).

So what does all these things sum up? I came to the realization that Juholt appears more and more like a swedish version of Richard Nixon. The "I'm not a crook"-speech pretty much sums up everything Juholt would say about his apartment problem. The social democrats more on the right are the "deep throats" that supplies the media with all the information since he pushed them back and now he gives us his "enemies list in a black book". If Juholt by some twist of fate wins the next election (or has to resign as a party leader) I wouldn't be surprised if he did the V-sign.

The End of Purgatory?

It's December and with it the feelings of Christmas is supposed to take hold on us and deliver us through our darkest hours in the year. Yeah, it probably is my darkest hour overall of my existence this year. First, I'm still unemployed and this is eating me from the inside. I might not be aware of this all the time, but when the darkness falls and my minds try to be put to rest, shadows of doubt clouds my thoughts. Depression hits and anxiety ravage me. What will happen to me? Am I good? Do I have a purpose? Have I chosen the right path? All question threatens to bring me down in a downward spiral of failure and insecurity. What keeps me going is the fact that this whole process intrigues me, to see the full extent of the decision made by politicians, yes, my political nerdiness is bringing me through this trial of fire at the moment. Although it gets worse.

The second thing that now looms over my head is that I need to find a new apartment since I've more than enough overstayed my welcome in a student apartment since I no longer is a student. Another woe, another cloud of darkness. How much longer do I have to sink deeper into the abyss of purgatory to once again be able to rise toward the skies? It's even worse that I for a very long time did a real cleaning of the place. I can actually see the whole floor now than simply the little path from my bed and computer toward the hallway/kitchen. Funny isn't. So, any good news you might ask?

Maybe not the best of news, but maybe a light in the darkness that can dispel the woes and distress that begin to shake me. Today the Swedish Public Employment Agency in Karlstad had a small work fair for unemployed youths that could visit certain employers who aspired to get an internship. So I actually had time to talk and present my CV to them in person, and I actually think I did pretty good at that (or it might be that I fool myself into believe that). Most interesting is that there was a couple of representatives from the municipality, one from the political branch (that is the administrative behind the parties, you know, right up my ally) that I just had to talk to. I think I pulled that of really well, pointing out my interest in politics (political science duh), my wide knowledge in different areas, a lot of different positions in organizations and I even got to mention my C/D-essays when he talked about the internship needing someone who could work alone and dig himself down in the task and present it so others understand (which pretty much sums up the essay process). Another of the municipality people got really interested in my studies in the European Union (university studies as well as the headliner for the high-school years). Another employer (the first one I talked) also was interesting to study, since someone had gone before me I actually saw her notes on him, taking up the space of 10 cm on a block of paper (making it a third of the paper), while she talked to me she filled the rest of the page (it's gotta be good right? Or am I looking into it to much?). Hopefully this will be the light that light my darkest hour and saves me from this purgatory.

Now beside all that, I finished Skyward Sword... again. This time on Hero Mode and getting 100 % (apparently missed a couple things like 2 chest, one containing a bottle without knowing it the first time). What this playthrough taught me was that the tortoise always wins. By taking your time with the bosses you can, with some skill and luck, beat them without losing any heart. The cheating bastard I wrote of before? Turns out that if you calm down and not tries to be to fast, he's actually very easy. Same goes for the scorpion boss which I was able to defeat without a sweat using my long distance sword thrust. I did not know that the first time, but when you do, boy, the sweet taste of victory when you defeat it with no damage taken is fantastic. Hardest part was the boss-rush to get the best shield when defeating 8 bosses without dyeing or using potions (and no random heart this time around). Another irritating thing was that the the normal mode made it possible to fight enemies to only fight bosses you only encountered previously in the game, Hero Mode puts all 12 of them there from the beginning meaning that only by luck can you get a good number of bosses. One time I got the the 7th battle and who do I face? A horde of enemies attacking me with everything they got, swords, bows, bombs. Epic when you do it in the game itself and you have potions with you cause there is no way to counter all of it, not so fun being killed right before the last boss. The good thing to is that Ghirahim in his last battle become easier the more I trained at it. Anyway, this time it only took around 30 hours to complete (probably mostly due to skipping ALL the cutscenes). Although I think I wont play it for some time since I got delayed onset muscle soreness (really? That's what you call it? We call it like, exercise pain) in my arms after all the waving (I finished it this Tuesday, that was two days ago and it still hurt a little). If I train to little? Probably.

Skyward Sword

By the title people can probably guess what I've been up to during the last week. Yes, I've been playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. And I completed it 100 % in one week. Compared that to the me in 2003 that had taken five years with a guide to finish Ocarina of Time. So now I can say once again that I finished every Zelda game published by Nintendo. And what do I think about it? It was OK, the story was interesting in its way to try having a new archenemy than Ganon and the series as a whole seems to go that way (this is gonna contain spoilers for those who haven't finished the game just so that anyone stumbling upon this knows). What I mean is that this games end boss is a demon lord, Spirit Tracks had the end bosses as a Demon Train and a Demon King, you have lovecraftian horrors like Bellum and Vaati so the series seems to go with ancient demon horrors as the main enemies of the series where Ganon is, as explained in the end of Skyward Sword, the eternal curse put upon the, by the Goddesses appointed, Hero and Princess. So instead of the manifestation of his inner-self, Ganondorf must have somewhere before Ocarina of Time made a pact with the series actual devil to gain his power and his Ganon form being the price for it (giving up his humanity and so on) which looks a lot like the actual devil himself.

Other aspects of the game is the music, not bad, I really liked the song when you followed the path to the Goddess Sword, but I miss familiar tracks from the older games. I only recognized one and that is the Zelda-theme. The graphics are nice and atmospheric and I have nothing against the cel-shaded look, it actually make it look lively (the more realistic look from Twilight Princes mostly went in colors of brown, red and grey which is not the prettiest colors to look at). Then again it's hard to tell due to the condition of my TV which I still haven't fixed so the colorful graphics make it at least easy to see what's going on. Then we have the controls, motion based making you theoretically swing with the sword yourself pulling you into the combat... in theory. I don't know, but sometimes I've had a hard time making a forward thrust with the sword (often crops up during a certain boss-battle against a Scorpion) and sometimes it feels like the most reoccurring boss is cheating since he blocked my every move (which he is supposed to do, but it doesn't feel like I could create a pattern on how to strike so it usually ends with me swinging all I got until he decides to use a sword instead). Mind you, they aren't horrible or hard to understand, there is just some flaws.

An enjoyable experience overall during the 50 hours it took me to finish the game and then they top it of with a hard mode as well (or "Hero's Mode" as they call it), don't know if I'm gonna finish that, but I now regret that I didn't make a double save post before the final battle so that I could have some proof of my 100 % cause I feel that the hard mode probably will kill me a lot more than the normal one (I think I died twice and one time was during the boss-rush game to get the best shield which was really good to have in the final battle). The biggest complaint though is that it feels short, the world itself feels small in comparison to the open plains of Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess or the vast ocean of Wind Waker. Now it's just an open sky with small rocks thrown around and three larger ground areas to explore, I miss the feeling of the epic scale the 3D Zelda games just have when you leave the forest area for the first time and can see the mountains in the north with the Castle just below standing as a monument over civilization in a world plagued by evil and the wild. You felt small in the world, in awe of nature, in this game it just feels... empty in the sky while the ground areas feel cramped together. All in all there is 6-7 temples that for a console Zelda is pretty standard so it shouldn't feel smaller. Maybe it has to do with me getting older and actually multitasking the game to find all secrets, heart pieces and so on compared to me as a child spending time just walking around avoiding the temples and dungeons cause I was scared. Talk about personal character development. Now it's just waiting another five years for the next home console release of the series to see where they are going with this with some handheld games in-between. 

Black Sabbath 11-11-11

Next years gonna be interesting, we will once again get a new Black Sabbath studio album, first official one since 1995 when Forbidden come out, not counting Heaven & Hell's The Devil You know (since, well... it's Heaven & Hell). That is 16 years (17 when it comes out) and 33 years since Ozzy Osbourne was the singer on a Black Sabbath-album (not counting the live album Reunion which contained two newly written songs for that, that was 1998). What would then be a good name for this new album (if it get of the ground that is, it could still be derailed)? Just at the top of my head I would say something like Rebirth or Resurrection would be fitting names, they could also do like Asia and name the album Phoenix like they did when the original line-up reunited for new albums and tours. Unfortunately they've already used up other good names like Never Say Die!, Born Again and Reunion in earlier albums. 

So when could we possibly see the release of the album? Earliest would be Friday the 13th January 2012 which would be a nod back toward their first album that also was released Friday the 13th  although February 1970. So by going by the Friday the 13th logic it could also happen in April or July. Other possible date if you want to appeal to an occult imagery is Wednesday the 12th December 2012 or 12-12-12 which is the same idea to this date (11-11-11) when they released the news. Last date I would think of would be the solstice Friday the 21st December 2012 or also known as the 2012 phenomenon (apparently). The end of the world as we know it, what better date to release a new Black Sabbath-album?

The Silver Lining

After playing Diablo it was time to play something happier. Coincidentally episode 4 of The Silver Lining came out during the Sunday. Unfortunately my internet seemed to screw up so I had to wait until yesterday to get it. Then I played it until the end. Yes, I finished it in one day... or at least till 2 AM this morning so technically it would be two days. Well, it wasn't that much happier story, people seemed really depressed and who would blame them. There is some serious business going on in that game. And yet for some reason I was able to finish it. I don't know how I was able to finish that game (well, I do since I know what to do now). I ended up having a lot of luck when it came to playing this game. First I just stumbled through the castle in the beginning and just happened to touch items from the earlier parts that I now was able to take. Pure coincidence. Then the game float on like normal and I picked up some small hints here and there and could guess fairly well what they was supposed to do. It might have to be my King's Quest marathon earlier this year so I had trained my brain to recognize those small hints and solutions. One puzzle in particular was the same as in the ADG Interactive King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones. Then I get stuck trying to get an instrument to get the first ingredient, so I just stands near it since I know that it's that thing I need, but I don't know how to get it. So I look in my inventory and look on those things I haven't used (everyone knows that if an item is picked up it gotta be used). I have no clue on what to do, but then my mind turns into a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. This is gonna be spoilers so here goes. I needed a horn, it existed in a 3D-picture, but the game wouldn't allow me to take it. I had found a gold baton and some beast hair and my mind just said, "what if we make it look like a horn and switch them around?". You see how ridicules that is? It didn't work, how could it? Although it wasn't completely wrong, the game told me I was missing some thing to glue (subtle is it not?) it together so I went where I knew it was and suddenly I had a painters brush. No idea what that was for, it was actually an answer to another puzzle which I hadn't found yet, so I basically found the answer before I knew what it was for so I figured the puzzles out backwards just by mistake. Wish life would be that easy, having all the solution, you just need to find the problems to solve them.

Either this was a much easier than the earlier episodes or my luck was just fantastic... it ended pretty much with the second to last puzzle. Not because it was hard to figure out what to do (took me 5 seconds), no, because they decided to make the puzzle harder and harder. The puzzle is to solve 12  combinations with 4 spinning wheels with different images that together form one of the zodiacs. After solving the first ones the wheels spin faster, then they blink in and out, then they change places (you start to see the problem?) and after combining 10 they start moving around the screen, still spinning and phasing in and out. This was on the normal difficulty and it was after 1 AM so I decided to chicken (tired as hell with a headache is not the best mood to play a game of patience and memorization) out after an hour so I could finish it before I went to bed so I quit and restored my earlier game. Somehow I glitch it, always present was the spinning wheel of the Pandoras Box and my clue in the Druid's parchment was the Druid himself instead of Shamir the Genie that I was supposed to see at that point. Anyway, I played the puzzle again, but on easy this time (meaning they cut of the changing places and swirling all around the screen) and thus beating it... and the next puzzle following: Magic Duel with the Big Bad of the game. Oh Yeah, it was epic. Unfortunately it will probably be another half year or something before the conclusion is payable. Oh well.

Lord of Terror

Guess what? After having Diablo for 15 years I finally finished it for the first time, took me 3 days of just playing. About does cheating Balrogs? I outsmarted them by doing a fast maneuver they didn't see coming... I ran. I went down a level, leveled once and then teleported back to town and then descended through the short cut into hell where they did once again run toward me and I was able to take down the first two after using all my potions and then fled up to the surface again, restock and reenter to give the final strike toward the last ones. Deader then dead. It felt so good. Then of course it was going even deeper, but who's your enemies? F***ing Succubus who only fires from a distance and when you get closer runs away. Some I was chasing over the whole damn floor before I was able to strike them down. And then it's f***ing Mages. Same MO, but this time they teleport. More annoying then ever, just stand still so I can cleave you with my sword. Finally, after hunting the damn Archbishop Lazarus around for 10 minutes I finally corners him and hack him to death and it's time to duke it out with Diablo... after fighting even more mages to open up his room. And then the Lord of Terror himself hides together with his Knights and mages waiting to kill me, but I got him, I finally got him. Take that demons of my past nightmares.

Yeah, it was fun and spooky, pretty fitting for the week we remember the dead. And it is really a good looking game for an almost 20 year old game, even the cinematics are pretty decent, the people's faces looks a little blocky and the raven in the beginning seems to have scales instead of feathers (compared to the opening cinematic for Blizzard's Warcraft 3), but overall really nice. Overall game graphics fill its parts, but it is a little bit devoid of color, and then we have the problem with that I can't see behind the walls or a hard time seeing what's on the floor from my fallen enemies. Sometimes they pile up so much that there's seems to be nothing else than a pool of blood and body parts, but it hides an armory. Music fits the mood as well, but it can be repetitive when it loops around and around, what are there, five tracks overall? Finally we have the awesome backstory which just fills me with awe. The war between angels and demons are a really interesting read in the manual that don't appear that detailed in the game, but it's almost makes it better. It's just small tidbits here and there, for example one creature log in the manual describe the arrogance and vanity of the angel Inarius (apparently they changed the backstory later on) that sees himself above all others and attacks the demons alone with only his followers. The demons retribution is how they capture him and pull his wings and eyelids of, mutilates him and throw him to a prison with only mirrors so he always will see what he have become. No pictures, nothing, instead my imagination sets in and probably creates to me the most awesome (although horrible) picture of that event. Really, by being that scared when I was younger I only reached level 2 or 3 before I chickened out (and not knowing about the restart option) I spent much more time reading the manual and instead imagining the story... Hmm, might have been all those scary images I created that stopped me.

Talking about terrifying, or just an interesting thought. This video is from a pension agency (or whatever it is called) trying to campaigning so that people decides for more ethical pension collective investment schemes (that is, they are campaigning for not as profitable, but more easier for you conscious or if you are a religious time, your afterlife) so that we all strive for a better world. It means no companies associated with weapons, oil, dictatorship and so on. All that altruistic goodness for a better world so that the future generation will grow up in a better tomorrow. My question is, why would we want that when the children attacks a random person dressed in a polar suit? F***ing bastards, why should we help them if they act like that? Let them burn, I will gladly call upon Diablo himself if I don't have to deal with children that annoying. It probably would be a much quicker destruction then what will happen when they take over.

Children of Mana/Diablo

 

Someone (probably none) wondering what I meant by last posts cliffhanger? Children of Mana is a game for the DS that I must say is one of the more boring games I ever played. And I usually like RPG:s, although they can lean to be the most cliché-filled plots ever (Skies of Arcadia for some example) and can play them over and over again. Although that is probably not a fair comparison since it's actually an action-RPG Dungeon Crawler, and the only other game that comes close that I've played in that genre is Diablo... and I never finished that game. So I'm probably not terrible fond of that genre since I prefer a whole world with lots of villages to visit and people to talk to. Feels like it's worth exploring and further the plot to see a new place and visit new people to save (without hoping to get paid). These two games are just looked in the same village with either a change of dungeon location (Children of Mana) or the dungeon itself changes depending on how further down you get in it (Diablo). All in all, it just feels boring. The things that balance it up on the other hand is the atmosphere in Diablo, it really feels scary, dark colors and sounds making you want to play it (it's just that I suck at leveling up my character in a good way and therefore not prepared to win tougher fights). Children of Mana on the other hand is more beautiful, the colors are fantastic and all... but it isn't enough for me to persuade me to finish it (beyond the fact I have to finish the game). Hmm, now I got a craving to play Diablo... hold on a minute.

 

*Three days later* OK, there isn't any competition, Diablo is so much better. It felt pretty good playing it this week with All Saint's Day and Halloween. And guess what, I made it to level 13, which means HELL. And it really are. Ambushed and killed by four Balrogs who had nothing better too do than wait at the entrance and await my decent into hell. Those bastards, I have waded through hordes of monster, but those four corners me and then kill me every single time. Being just a mere Warrior I'm now seriously looking into using my limited spell power to at least get some advantage... No, those demons are immune to my level 12 fireball which is the most leveled up spell I got. The only one that seemed to turn the tide was Stone Curse, but I don't have enough mana in order to stop more than one, which means the other three keeps bashing on me until the cursed one awakens and I'm lucky if I'm able to kill at least one, but then my potions are all out and I'm dead. Cheating bastards. If I'm not able to turn the tide and keeps getting killed the other option would be to start a new game again, and I didn't know that, and I have had this game for 15 years. A new game plus feature without even needing to complete the game. Only bother is to wade through the first 8-9 levels without being able to pick up any XP, but if that what it takes to survive the first level of hell so be it, at least I got some really nice armor and equipment fighting the first bosses. 

Point of No Return

Been replaying the Golden Sun-series again, and it is as fun as ever, although it can be frustratingly slow at some portions when you almost know the speeches by heart after playing the oldest one for 10 years. Also you learn something new every time you play it, just look at the second game where you can transfer the data from the first game to the second. If you don't the bonus dungeon can't be reached and certain cutscenes with special items don't happen. Combine this with the ability to play the game over with the same level and stats at the end of a cleared game. Now, I replayed the game maybe 3 times, usually starting with putting in the password needed to transfer all equipments, djinni and so on. The thing is... it's 260 characters long for everything. So this time around, since I didn't do any adjustment to the final equipment of my characters in game one so I thought it was just to start the game over with everything remembered without having to use the password since, well, my old save must have memorized it right? Apparently not, cutscenes I expected didn't show up so I had to go back a little bit and then input the password... all 260 characters. I put them in and everything seems back to normal so I continue to play the game. I reach the point when the old cast joins your group after clearing 75 % of the game and what do I see? They have almost half the level they had at the save. Apparently the game interpreted my input that level 56 was alright compared to my level 90. It thought wrong so I pretty much rage quit and started up the old save and did some level grinding before beating the soul out of the end-boss. Irritating to say the least, but I at least know that till next time.

So after that I started up the third game and it has grown on me. After the mediocre first playthrough it begins to feel interesting. Maybe it has to do with much better controls since the DS Lite has almost no A-button left which makes it nice to just move around with the stylus. But their is still times when it feels like inferior to the original two games. First is the points of no returns. There is three of them, first after you traveled through the first ruin, second one after you reach the "lost city in the sky" (although you can travel back to everything in between those two points after the third point, but you can't revisit the city itself) and the third one happens when you set sail for the first time. These are kinda annoying since it makes the game feel rushed and makes one wonder if they didn't have time to fill the game with content. And this is a game series that had the quirkiness to let the NPC at the end of the second game have minds to read even though no one in your party at that time couldn't read them. The first one is the most annoying since it makes it impossible to travel back to the first area. The only reason why that would be the case is that would make it possible for the party to travel to Bilibin through an alternative route. How do they do it? The enemy sets a trap with boulders that block your path backwards. It would have been fine and all if it weren't for the thing that 5 second earlier the Scholar Kraden mentions that the psynergy vortex you encountered would block your path itself so you wouldn't be able to follow him when he went north and you south to rescue Rief. So what was the point of the enemy cave in? By avoiding that and just using the psynergy vortex would have made it possible to travel back to the first area and at the same time remind people about the threat of the vortexes instead of the almost out of the blue ending. 

This ties together with the weakest part of the game, there is no sense of urgency for the main characters. The only thing would be the psynergy vortexes since you are hinted about the mourning moon in the beginning and the destruction it causes, which would be a good thing in that it urges the player to continue before it is to late... if the plot thread wasn't dropped after the first ruin where the third vortex is spotted and only returns at the very end. They never mentions it between those two points. Personally this feels like one of the reasons I felt the second game wasn't as good as the first. The first one had you hunting the madmen who wanted to release the destructive force of Alchemy, they kidnapped your love interest and your mentor and possibly killed your parents. You travel across two continents following them as they wreck havoc, destroys merchant roads, kills and hurt soldiers and scholars until you finally corners them at the top of the second lighthouse and a battle to the death were you learn about a whole village of these people and their mantle is picked up by your childhood friend you failed to save at the beginning of the game as he plans to finish their work... and then the game ends. The second game picks up after that, but puts you in the clothes of that childhood friend as he fights to finish what they started. I didn't care that much when I first played this game since I waited two years for this, but now I wondered, what is the motivation for the player to finish this? Especially us who played the first game? Not until you reach Lemuria you get a reason why alchemy is in fact good, the world is being devoured due to lack of energy. Not until the 75 % mark when the other group joins you finally get the reason why it is urgent in a much more personally way, the enemy holds your parents as hostage in their village, a village that is threatened to be the first to fall into the abyss at the ends of the world if you don't ignite the lighthouses. There, a reason, but it felt a bit to late, although small hints are spread all around the game, but not only until I got the whole picture was I clear on what they meant. I miss that in the third game as I'm being pushed around by my enemies without much input on the story. I know it's wrong from the start since they can't be up to something good, but still I'm forced into it against my will. Better had been if I felt it necessary to reach my goals and there was no other way due to the urgency of my quest, but my quest is to gather a feather and the plot around it dropped after 1-2 hours. But it is still better than Children of Mana.

The Curtains are Falling

Yet another dictator has fallen by the people he repressed. Is the world safer? Maybe, we don't know or we can't foresee the consequences of the turmoil. Will the relative stability of a dictatorship evolve toward a democratic stability or will the power vacuum threaten to engulf its people in a longer battle between themselves? Shrouded in mist is the future. The first country to shake of the chains of dictatorship in the North African region was Tunisia and its election time. They stand at a crossroad, and it doesn't seem that good when one of the alternatives is more censorship and a more religious government combined with that if the result doesn't go their way they will hit the streets again. It's not that much of a democratic vibe in these people. Doesn't help that people seems indifferent and would abstain from voting. What can we do if the people themselves don't care about their government or their human rights?

Even if I paint it in the bleakest colors, it's still a very vibrant situation all over the world. Dictatorships are falling by the hands of their people (with one instance of western help) and it could be a new dawn in front of us. Of course this echoes back from the fall of the iron curtain and communism. If I had been interested in politics and world news from an early age my first memories would probably been of the fall of the Soviet Union (the fall of the Berlin Wall I was definitely to young to remember). More interesting events I do actually remember and followed more intensely was the fall of Afghanistan and Iraq and now North Africa. At the same time I've been around to witness the genocide's in Rwanda and the Yugoslavian wars and the after tremors in the above countries. At the same time we see how the western worlds themselves stand on the brink of collapse due to economical failure and even corruption. Are we seeing a steel bath to cleanse the air and bring forward a reigniting of the western hegemony? It's a bit of a stretch since all of the western powerhouses are crumbling at their very foundations. The US economy is at a stand still and the same is for the political leadership who is to weak to bring them out of it. The EU don't have the strong leadership they need either to unify and lead them toward the same goals, they are all to differentiated and when the economical resources they possess are being poured over almost failed states and farming subsidies instead of reforms toward a modern economy there is little hope. This leaves our asian friends in the pacific. Japan is a zombie economy that haven't released itself from the death grip in the 90's which leaves South Korea and Taiwan that are to small and forced to protect themselves from the threat of hostile neighbors. So there is no industrialized countries to go too. A new generation must step forward. South America (I know it's not a country, but there would be to many to name), India and China are the only ones that seems to have a decent position to restart the wheels. Or we could start World War III, war seems to be a good way to build industries on and this time we don't take loans over the roof when it's over.

Out of the Shadows

I don't know how I pulled it of, but I've now seen all three of the Liberal party's member congresses since 2007. And without actively searching for it (well, except from this year, I actually knew it was coming up so I have had the TV set for SVT Forum), I just zapped between the channels and voila, there it was. Do I remember anything? No, although I actually like politics and this particular party, I just have the TV on beside me while I do my daily chores and sit by my computer. Meaning I'm not that focused and only catch certain bits, and it doesn't help when some are the most boring sounded politicians ever. Sometimes there is a funny speech pattern or voice that penetrate the constant barrage of sounds around me, sometime a word that poke me with interest, but more often then not, it's more interesting reading about what they decide in the newspaper one minute after they clubbed it than listen to their debate about it. The only interesting parts is when you see some more familiar politicians or the analyzes after certain debates outside the conference room or the interviews. Another funny thing with this one is that it was that the congress was in Karlstad. Had it been closer I might even had visited (if I could get in). That is actually kinda funny, since earlier this year we had the Moderates here as well, and the week after that the Green Party. Almost like Karlstad is the unofficial political capital for 2011. Should we expect the rest of them as well? Well, except the Center Party, and no, it isn't because I don't like them that much, but they seem to always have theirs in Sälen.

Anyway, the first opinion poll after last weeks debacle has been published. Problem is it was done before and after the incident broke the news, meaning it probably isn't that reliable if you look at it as a whole. If we take it straight up nothing actually happened, they still hold over 30 % of the voters and a red-green coalition (if it would manifest) would take the lead with 0,1 % and the Sweden Democrats would still be the king makers. But that isn't the interesting part. It was done over two weeks, with the first week before and the second week after. The polling institute was nice enough also to divide the data as before and after and gave an interesting result. Before the news broke, the Social Democrats had around 35 % of the votes while Moderaterna only gained 28 %. Clearly we saw the beginning to once again take charges of the polls like in 2007-2010 (that is before May 2010 when the red-greens presented their first budget and completely collapsed). This week on the other hand, the support dropped to 27 % while Moderaterna jumped to almost 33 %. Interesting shift is it not? The Social Democrats fell with 8 percentage points to a history low. Shadenfraude run rampant through me. Of course, this is nothing to take solid ground on. For that we must see the next poll that happened after the scandal. Then, and only then can we see it this will have long-term effects on the party and even then we can't be sure. History show us that a majority of voters decide which party to vote for the last week and a big bunch of those during election day, telling us that that it is hard to foresee who will win. 

We don't even know what pulls the voters to vote like they do. Last election much time and comments on the newspapers was dedicated for the discussion about what was necessary for to lead the country, to become statsminister. Mona Sahlin had it tough due to the reason for her to take a time-out back in 1995 was because she had used the Riksdags credit card to get over 50 000 SEK ($ 7 140 or € 5555) as some "advance money" on her pay. She had to go at that time(other reasons had to be an internal power struggle inside the party which could be the same as for the current party leader). So during the election campaign the Toblerone-affair was constantly referenced and added with more stories how she had no control over her economy and broken the law for small things like driving a car that was banned from driving and so on. The trust for her has, by more right-commentators granted, was put against Reinfeldt and was supported my the polling institutes that showed a constant advantage for Reinfeldt over Sahlin and was the light in the dark for us others. We did at least have the most trusted politician(s). The point is that she never got away from that, it crippled her career and possibilities to be seen as a Statsminister. And now, this erupted for them. It's not only that he seem to have a bit of a greedy-streak when it comes to money, he doesn't seem to have the organizational skills to lead his party. Policies changes several times over the course of a week and he even back-stabs persons he first green-lighted, but after a couple of hours pulled back his support for. It is not a healthy party we are looking at. So if there is one thing that this poll could do for them, it would be that they realize that they are sick. Unfortunately, the only thing most parties seems to do when confronted with the reality is to change the leader and hope that that would be enough. Moderaterna understood their problem back in 2002 when they almost lost the title as the biggest non-socialistic party to the Liberal Party. They changed leader who at the same time made a complete overhaul over the policies they stood for. The welfare state should still exist, but should be changed in order to put the worker at the center and point out that they are the backbone for our society. Social democratic ideas from old in a more liberal take and the way forward to heal the wounds of a bureaucratic shadow that gripped our country since the 1970's.

Panic in the Party

I didn't see this coming. Juholt apparently will be able to hold on to his position, for how long is another question. At first glance it seems completely idiotic from an outside position. A leader who has no common sense when it came to morally decisions, can't support his own people in policies he agreed to and speak in double tongue when it comes to complain about the governmental policies made by his opponents, but in his own budget makes little to no difference. Well, I can't say I will have a hard time choosing who to vote for in 2014 (not like 2006, god, partially regret voting for S, but it was the morally best decision since FP more or less screwed up with the hacking scandal). Maybe shouldn't write this in stone since it's three years left till the election, but I will probably indoctrinate myself together with the sheer distaste for the left-green policies that there is no other choice.

So that was the outside perspective, if we look on the inside, does it make any sense? Well, sort of. If you look on what happened during the last year power vacuum when they searched for Juholt, S already then collapsed and showed very low poles. Social democrat stabbed social democrat and there were no coherent political platform. They don't want to do that again since it would only strengthen the view of a party in free fall. So the damage control is to stand still in the storm at the moment and then try to regain confidence. The problem with that is if something else surfaces later during the term of office it will be to late to damage control since it's connected to a person they can't change within a year of the elections. Which brings up a second reason to not change him, there is no-one to elect. This is probably the best person they have (or more correctly, could agree on). 

Can Juholt win the 2014 election? Personally (and therefore subjectively) I would say no ceteris paribus. If we take the recent party leader debate in the parliament he once attacked Reinfeldt about people with cancer being forced out of the sickness system to look for work (which is a problematic since it actually should be about the bureaucrats reevaluating the people who just continues to be in the systems and maybe being to harsh in their judgment, which we could bring up together with the bureaucratic structure theory that with a social democratic rule of almost 100 years surly have painted the bureaucrats in the color red and against the Alliance, a little conspiracy for you). He then continues to question the morals of the statsminister, which in light of the current affair doesn't strike out that well. It really backfires. And I have no faith in them anymore, and I'm pretty much one of those they have to win. An urban person with a high education (if we don't take in the fact I don't have a job, but I will, hopefully, have one then).

So, being an aspiring political oracle, who will win after all this? Well, easily all other parties will get a boost from the fall of the social democrats (at least in theory). The left wing voters of the social democrats will emigrate to the left party who is in the middle of electing a new leader (or even two). Most signs points to at least Jonas Sjöstedt will be the chosen one, being more pragmatic he will probably be a hit after the moral collapse and the all to right-wing budget S produced last week. I'm actually gonna guess that they might hit 9-10 % again (ceteris paribus of course) in the next election. The more faithful social democratic voters might join the christan democrats due to their morals or whatever they do. The right wing voters of the party might most likely join either Folkpartiet or Moderaterna, depending on how much they detest Moderaterna or how liberal they feel Folkpartiet is. The green social democratic voters probably goes to the green party (obviously) and lastly those who feel that the established parties just use the people will go to the Sweden Democrats. The only party I see losing is the Center since, well, they have their own politician doing the same (at least with the housing), but since he pretty much was a nobody before the affair broke, he might just make it, but he can't advance in the party since then he would gain the same treatment. An estimation on the fall... 10-15 % if it continues, maybe 5 % if juholt and the other social democratic politicians keep their act together. It doesn't even have to be that they go to a new party, might be enough that they stay on the sofa during election day since that would hurt them badly due to the right voters being more incline to go vote (since they usually have a higher education and are more interested in politics, and at the same time have the possibility to expel the social democrats from power for 12 years, oh yeah). More or less, I expect that the Alliance will gain a majority in the next election, but it could be a false sense of hope, since at least one of the parties (christ democrats) continues to stand below the 4 % needed to get into parliament and the Center party being above and under during different poles since the election. Will be interesting to see the next opinion poll.

Lame Duck

You know, this Juholtgate or what ever the press will name this is getting ridicules. The more is leaked, the more it seems that this is an internal problem in the party itself that is played out at front-stage for all the people to see. Now it seems that he have a hard time to survive the weekend after even more problems appearing. The citizen debacle last week? Apparently he said yes first and told the person in charge of those question that it was a go, then pulled back his support five hours later. There is some trouble with deducted twice as much for one car (both as his own and borrowed) and allegedly voices from within the party tells the story that those who elected him knew about these problems even though they deny it. Nothing left than to step down in order to save what's left of the public confidence in the party. I'm guessing that there will be a huge party meeting next year where a new leader is elected. Meaning that we will once again see the attacks between the possible candidates (who still doesn't want the assignment but will say yes when the party calls... after five times or so). I can't help but have a bit of shadenfraude over this, being a political bourgeois (a variation of the translated name given to the four non-socialistic parties with liberal and/or conservative ideology), I can't anything else than feel a satisfaction that the only party being able to wrestle the prime minister-post (or statsminister-post, I didn't think they had that distinction between those similar titles on wikipedia) away from the current government is so damaged it is hard to imagine that it will be able to recover, and this without the governmental parties doing anything.

Of course, it's 3 year left till the next election (and they already prepared the wikipedia page, as a political scientist I'm proud) so anything could possible happened. Although at this moment it doesn't look as who's gonna "win" the election, it's more interesting to see if the Alliance will be able to gain over 50 % of the votes and with that a majority (which of course from my side would be the best outcome). At least I feel a lot better now, the short lived depression I felt seems to have lifted. Funny how that is. It's also sad to see this once greatest party of them all so utterly weakened. It's easiest to look at the amount of time the different leaders sat at their post, the first one (after a two-year collective leadership) Claes Theolin sat 11 years, second Hjalmar Branting 18 years, third Per-Albin Hansson 21 years (both Branting and Hansson died while in office), then we have the fourth and one of the longest serving democratically elected leaders in the world, Tage Erlander, being both party leader and statsminister for 23 years in a row. The fourth was Olof Palme that sat for 17 years and was murdered in office by an unknown killer. Sixth one being Ingvar Carlsson sitting only 10 years. Following up in spot number seven is Göran Persson being able to hold the position for 11 years. Followed by Mona Sahlin (who was supposed to have the position after Carlsson, but due to certain scandals with a bad sense of economy forced her out of the loop for 11 years) who only sat for 4 years (and together with Theolin being the only Social democratic leaders not being statsminister). She was quickly followed by Håkan Juholt, who now seems to have to leave it already next year. Sitting only 1 year. And not being statsminister. While the bourgeois seems to sit in power through a minimum of three elections counting at least 12 years. Never happened before, how does that feel, eh?

Conclusion? Social democrats, get your act together. We need an opposition that we can work together with over the blocs in order to make way for infrastructure, pensions, energy, defense and foreign policies that are reliable. We can't have an imploded party taking up around 30 % of the voters and not be able to see what you want or not, maybe if you only had 15 %, but that means the governmental parties need to get at least 2 oppositional parties on the train otherwise we get an unstable government and market only damaging the people.

The Needle and the Damage Done

So the weekend has passed. A great weekend if you asked me. Really charged the batteries, although it might not have been the best way, but it was a nice break from the mundane looking for jobs and check the news (although they have been rather interesting lately). What did I do then? Party-time. A friend of mine invited me to a gathering of her friends so I didn't know anybody else. So it was drinking games, social interaction, out clubbing, midnight snack, after party and sleeping in a sofa bed with two others. They got the blanket but shared a pillow while I got a pillow for myself. Sleeping in jeans and a shirt with my jacket over my legs wasn't  that nice, especially since I was stiff as a stick, turning 15 degrees at a time trying to find a good sleeping position. Didn't help that one of the other began taking over more and more of the space making me fear that if I had to go to the toilet I would have to sleep on the floor. Think I got a knee in the back once. Woke up around 9 with everyone else, stiff, tired and had a cold, lucky not a serious hangover. Then it was teaming up with everyone else and have a hangover pizza... and I fear that pizza. Someone ordered a calzone pizza where the bread pretty much was dough and the filling was steamed cooked. Some who ordered a kind of meat-topping got them still red and I could only eat a bit more than half a vesuvio. I had some flashbacks from my trip to Rome with my high school-class where, after a pizza, I spent the friday night food poisoned and couldn't eat normally for the rest of the trip. Seemed to have dodged that bullet at least this time.

Well that was my privet adventure so the next thing was the debate on the public TV-channel. It was fine. nothing much to say actually. No sparking ideological debate, not much heated arguments (only once that stood out). Maybe due to the agitating style of the left not being present since... well, they left walk-over. What to say, the Alliance didn't do anything wrong so that's good. Reinfeldt was OK, the same for Björklund and Lööf. Hägglund seemed distant, but I can't blame him. He probably was focused on his own party trying to dispose of him, he really looked old, like if his hair had become grayer. Romson was a surprise, but didn't speak to me (I might have become ideological blind), but she made a no-no in my world when she completely lost it debating the last party leader, Åkesson. The same mistake it seems all female politicians do when debating SD is become so emotionally engaged that they can't keep their calm. It's a disaster and was handled much better by Lööf. Åkesson then? Fairly good, I can't deny that. The only time he made a mistake (which went unattended by the others) was when they debated the nuclear power plants. 6 out of 10 is not in working condition and we now use oil to fill the missing energy so Björklund wanted to build more, but in the Alliance Lööf is against it. So Åkesson tried to say they are willing to take Cs place. The thing is that they still wouldn't get a majority for that since C has more parliamentarians then SD (kinda ironic that the only question I personally would be tempted to use their votes their is no possibilities to make that decision pass the parliament without S and then SD would be completely out of the loop anyway). This would only made the Alliance open for attacks from S and V for siding with SD without any gains. But C at least should have pointed that one out with a little stinger about the inability for them to count half of 349 people (especially since they have already lost one by him going independent).

Otherwise the Alliance did the best, mostly since they put forward the best needles against the others. Björklund and Reinfeldt were the best. Björklund really got forward the importance of the nuclear plants and that the alternative was Russian gas (which "had two problems, 1. being gas and 2. being russian). But he missed to point out that we probably would get energy from the Finish reactors as well making the green hypocrites . Also the EMU sidetrack he could at least have talked about Finland again with words as "but Finland is in EMU and done pretty well" and if SD attacked that they could always tried to corner them in that if Finland is wrong there they could as well being wrong in their immigration which I believe SD usually put up as an example (don't quote me on that, but I think they did, I know they did it with Denmark). Reinfeldt also had his moments, especially how he countered Romson. The Alliance advocate that we should count lowering carbon dioxide in other countries as part of our strategy, the greens don't like that and it shall be on a national level. So he countered their argument that it's a global strategy and that we use less resources with that and "resources are limited", which is a staple in the greens rhetoric's. Romson stumbled there and it was nice to see. Also, the Alliance overall was good at countering the immigration critics from SD with that they try to change it from "passive victims to nurse by the socialistic state" to a more "active work immigration". It's coherent in their overall plan as well puncturing the momentum they have. Also a good point was pointing out the problem with the budget that 100 billion a year could be saved by lowering immigration and thru that pay for all the reforms SD want to introduce (many being left in nature showing their roots in social policies being just that, left). Also a nice touch now that the Social Democrats missing in the debate was when Reinfeldt uttered "the only one sounding like a social democrat is Jimmie Åkesson": Would he have said that if Juholt was there? Probably not, or at least not like that (since Åkesson then wouldn't have been the only one sounding like that). The ironic thing is that they didn't want to be associated with SD by standing close to them, but they didn't think about this happening and leaving those remarks without a fight? No that is a complete failure when the once reason they give backfires and they can't even defend themselves (and it was also subtle so it didn't feel like an easy shot do smear S with SD). Then again, my ideological and political glasses might make me blind.

Self-implosion

You know, I'm a man of politics. It's one of the few interesting parts of our daily life that is easy to talk about and can be translated over the world, although there is regional differences in what's good or bad politics for ones country, municipality and so on. But I think most people will agree when someone really fails. In Sweden the latest weeks have been on the Christian Democrats with a civil war over who's gonna be the party leader: the old one from a more liberal branch or a more conservative. Doesn't help that they got run over time after time by the other coalition partners. Well if that isn't the guide to kill a party who dangles on the edge I don't know what is. Lets see how you manage with a party with 30 % support.

That's right. The Social Democrats seems to be even worse. First we have an internal conflict over the new budget when the leaders weren't enough "left" for its members in the parliament. It finally passes and all is well (except the usual political debate over what is good governing and I don't need to tell my view on that). Then we have the calm before the storm and then everything hits the fan today. First the Social Democrats and the Left decides to cancel their participation on the party leaders debate on Sunday with the argument that they don't want to be put together with the Swedish Democrats. This happens right after the news announces that Juholt (the leader of the Social Democrats) have gotten tax-payers to pay ca 160 000 SEK (€ 18 000 or $ 23 000) for the apartment in Stockholm he shared with his girlfriend on the wrong circumstances. If that wasn't enough the big Social Democratic boss of Malmö (the third largest city) announces that he would like to see some kind of second-hand citizenship in order to make it easier to send criminals back from where they came. Oh yeah, and the second largest city, Gothenburg, have had a long-running problem with corruption which is topped today by one municipality chief giving her daughter without education a job before 94 others who also wanted the job. Both being Social Democratic strongholds since everyone was allowed to vote in 1919.

If we analyze this who will win? Well neither S or V since... well, they did everything wrong. SD will win support from those parties. The Alliance win on walk-over and probably will get a hold of more voters from S who can't stand this sheer incompetence. The only reason they would fail against SD would be if they botch this completely... there is some uncertainty there isn't? MP would probably also get a boost from those voters and might even have some of V. All in all everyone but S and V win on this. Maybe that's their plan? To lower themselves so much that the Alliance get all the voters and can rule without fear of being voted down again? Nah... but it seem plausible!

Nobel, Jobs and Golden Sun

So a Swede got the Nobel prize in literature? More than 30 years ago since last time... damn, then my shot at it is gone. Leaves the peace price, but who wants that when it's given in Oslo, I want to be in Stockholm. And I have a hard time believing that the norwegians would grant a swede the peace prize, you know... because the Union. And then Steve Jobs is dead. A pity, I really liked the products his company makes and if I had the money (or a job overall) I would gladly update my computer to a Mac. Too young at only 56 to leave as well, he will be missed. And that was the contemporary news, now lets talk about Golden Sun instead *NOOOOO* What?

It's just one thing that bugs me when I look at the maps of the different games. In the original games, the Angara continent looked like this:

The Angara continent is the northern part over the almost African-looking part. Maybe not the best, but you have a fair decent look on the world. Now, look at this map from the latest game:

A bit different, but due to the event in the end of the second game it has at least some explanation for why it looks different, but it still doesn't make that much sense. There is three places that appears again from the old games, Mt. Aleph, Kolima and Champa. Kolima isn't that easy since in-game it's explained it moved itself so that leaves two points to look at. Mt. Aleph looks about right in the mountains and forest compared on both maps, but Champa seemed to have moved to the west which is kinda hard to explain. Maybe if earth had risen from the west out of the ocean it might have been logical, but that the continent grew inside itself and still had ruins being functional stretching over most of the world isn't that plausible. But then again it might have been magic.

With that out of the way, another thing that bugs me, and I guess some others as well, is the lack of familiar places. As I mentioned, three places is visited and another one is seen, but never visited (Mercury Lighthouse) and one is often mentioned but not even seen (Bilibin). But where is Vault, Xian and Altin? Where is Lama and Fuchin Temple? And even harder to explain, where is the Lamakan Desert and Mogall Forest? Well, the last two might not be that hard to explain with the change of environment, but still, the forest is pretty much in the same spot as Sana, the equivalent of the Chinese empire. What did they do, cut down the magical forest? It's didn't work out all to well for the people in Kolima. It would have been nice to see or hear what happened to those places since we actually travel around in the vicinity. Also why don't we get any cameos from the person living in that area (Feizhi, Hsu and Master Feh). Have they moved? Are they dead? Feizhi crossed the mountains to cameo in the second game, why noting similar here? Hmm, when I think about I actually thought it would be more people with a portrait, but the only other one you encounter that isn't in the third game is Hama and she is probably in Contigo so I probably can't really complain. But it would be nice if these people showed up in the fourth installment (that we all hope will become reality really soon right?).

The Clairvoyant

Hope I don't get burnt out with all these updates, it would be so sad when I finally get up the steam again (of course this is sarcastic). The difference from the summer is that stuff actually happens. The biggest news to hit the Swedish political scene is that one of the Sweden Democrats has turned into a wild card and left the party, still retaining his seat. This means that it is a possibility that the Alliance is one seat closer to the magic number of 175 (the current is 173 so they are missing 2). Of course, they can't touch him since his past in SD means he's almost an outcast. To avoid the future debate that they are just power hungry and leave themselves open for attacks from the red-green parties he probably would be left alone up to his own schemes. This logic probably apply to the red-green as well, especially since the only possible party would be the Social Democrats, the green and left party are diametrically different in the only question that SD has shown any interest in, immigration. Doesn't help that he have some problems with alcohol and medication. Well, it make it easier for the Alliance overall since the opposition is getting more fragmented and could raise doubt about SD over the health of the party. The interesting thing is that I thought of this possibilities as late as yesterday (if you choose to believe me), and that the danger for SD would be that one of the wild cards would adopt an even more extreme party like the National Democrats, incidentally they themselves where once a part of SD that broke lose. If that would happen their effort to appear as a "clean" party would be severely damaged if that would be seen as an interchangeable political view in the party.

And that was the political update for this update, now to different things. Now it seems that someone is looking into my mind, damn americans, what can't you do? Well, it's just some news that scientist have constructed a computer that if you put enough data in it could foretell events in the future. The thing is that I thought on a similar idea a long time ago. Simply program a search engine to search the web after certain buzzwords (preferably news and social media in all known languishes) that would give an indication for certain geographic hotspots around the world where something might happen. Then you have to analyze the data (it's here I find that political scientist would be very good to have) and it's here we have the problems with this idea. It's not foolproof. First, this idea is only workable if everything is reported in the news or by people, a blackout on information or no internet, then it collapses (incidentally the computer in the article has a similar problem, since it appears someone has to put in the information and in that case it would be to late to stop or warn about what's happening which defeats its purpose). Secondly, my idea is prone to the human error since it need humans to analyzes  the information that is gathered. This of course needs someone more knowledgeable with these sorts of things, but the possibilities are many if you would get it to work. You could warn of future trouble or even catastrophes (earthquakes and tsunamis often have smaller shakes and so on before, but they are often missed in the media so if some buzzwords could catch them and a geologist would interpret the data you could give a statistical prediction of what would happen). Other things would be that gambling on the stock-market could be a bit easier (if we lock-on to certain parameters and companies an economist could theoretically provide an idea if the company's stock would rise or fall). Personally I would call it the Oracle Project and put it in a skyscraper I would call the Tower of Delphi. The gambling on the stock-market would be the financial branch that pays for the whole project and with the surplus it would probably be best to branch out in different areas so in case the human error makes an appearance. Pity I don't know anything about programming, and then it probably wouldn't work because all those assigned on the analysis team would just be on Twitter and Facebook.

Final thing for today, I finally finished Secret of Mana, a game I wanted as a kid, but we neither had a SNES when it came out and it was rather rare when we got one... in the late 90's. A bit pity since I probably would have appreciated it a lot more then than now. Maybe because I might have finished it in one sitting, I took a break for half a year or more so the story went a bit over my head. But the graphics was still nice, the controls a bit awkward until you gotten used to it, but the damn ring-system was kinda annoying at times. The music was alright, but I couldn't help but draw parallels with Chrono Trigger that came a couple of years later. Certain bits are somewhat similar sounding, especially the palace music after you gotten the Mana seeds are reminding me of the "sealed doors" and somewhere in Secret of Mana something from either Ocean or Zeal Palace. The ending a bit sad (but that's usually expected for Square and now Square Enix), but the impact was somewhat lessened due to the pause I took, although that didn't help when I met an important end character after I resumed the game and didn't feel emotionally attached to it (might have to be due to the ending being spoiled years ago in a video game magazine).

Masters of Insanity

Wow, two posts in one week, that was a long time ago since that happened. Anyway, I haven't written much about Sweden or what's happening here, since it doesn't appear to happen anything. Till now that is, and that is not in a good way. During this summer there was five professors or what ever they called themselves that published an article that talked about the necessity to take away the car since it didn't serve any purpose and was just a luxury product. Now, I don't have a car nor do I have a drivers license, but that doesn't mean I understand the importance of having one. The professors (from Karlstad and Umeå, both middle size swedish towns) argue that because the car is an luxury product (they call it that since people have the audacity to want cars that don't just have the bear minimum of performance) those should be forced to settle in a more "strategic position" and everyone else should pay to subsidize the public transportation. More that we already does. I have before written how I as a kid traveled 12 years with the school bus, but what I probably didn't mention was that during the last 3 years my parents had to drive me to the bus since it would take 1 hour to walk or you could go up an hour earlier to catch a connecting bus, then wait till the school bus. F*** public transportation. If that wasn't enough, these people actually argued that the politicians should, without the public support (which they knew they didn't have), force this change upon the people. Nice view on democracy. Anyway, after being more or less hacked to pieces by the public (except some supporters) they changed tactic and now talked about it being more by choice. Of course me and everyone else now know to never trust these five or their organization when it comes to solutions at all since behind them hides the dark face of oppression and despotism to serve their warped ideas of a utopia.

That was that some people thought and we wouldn't here some stupid things from Karlstad and Umeå University, but what happens? Umeå is at it again but not concerning traffic-dictatorship. Now it's some warped orwellian speak about men being healthier when being home more often from work. WTF??? How? How does one comprehend this? It's utter nonsense? Why? Well, we could give benefit of doubt by arguing that the journalist in question didn't quite get it right, if we had had some comments below the article I'm sure someone would have pointed it out, but we don't. Also, the whole thing was about men gaining from a more equal work environment. If that means getting weaker health I might just pass on it. The professor herself argues that it's because men now take sick-leave due to colds compared to before when they still went to work. And then we have those who see no fault in this logic and begin talking about men are no longer that macho at their work environment. If going to work when having a cold is macho my macho-meter probably turned itself to badass, cause I never had missed a day of school or work due to some little cold (except that one time when it coincide with the ordinary german teacher being out of town and that class would turn into a zoo).

Wind of Changes

... God, it has been a while. Well, probably for the best since nothing actually has happened. I don't think you (who am I kidding, it's just me reading this) would have the stomach for each blog-post detailing a downward spiral of depression and lost hopes and dreams. Yeah, unemployment isn't that fun. Time seems to stand still since you can't do anything, you are trapped where you are and hope to escape this black hole of despair by gripping the escape rope in the form of a constant pay. Work may not make you free, but it least give you the means to escape into dreams to endure. The current state I'm in... is just dull. Not only that, it also affect me psychological. I'm mostly a positive person, a happy person, a carefree person, or at least gives the impression of those things. But at the moment, this uncertainty begins to gnaw on the positive spirit I'm trying to uphold. It feels like small needles poisoned with doubt is piercing my soul. Not only doubt, but also hopelessness. Although, being the optimist it will probably turn out for the best. If nothing else, i will clearly have an advantage over the broiler politicians that talk about unemployment *mumble* like they ever been unemployed those nepotistic bast...  *ahem*

Over to some more interesting stuff. Election time in Denmark. Yay! The red team won. Boo! Although, to be fair, I have no idea what their stances are, it just become a reflex, the red team at home doesn't seem to be getting any better. And it's just not as easy to say that the red team won, the social democratic and left party alliance actually lost, but with the extreme marxist left party as well as the social liberal party (funny enough called Radikale Venstre, or the radical left) they are able to wrest power from Venstre (the liberal party, Venstre meaning left) and Konseravative Folkeparti (the liberal conservative party). Gonna be 5 or less interesting years in danish politics (the prime minister can actually decide when he wants an election within a 5 year period, the same system is used in Great Britain). And for you who know your political map, why do the liberals call them self left when they are clearly on or to the right of the middle? Well, that has to do with the fact that the liberals usually are some of the oldest parties and were opponents to the conservatives (called very often the right party, especially in the nordic countries, only the norwegian conservative party call themselves right anymore, Høyre). With time the liberal parties was pushed from the left to the right side on the political scale when usually the social democrats entered the parliaments and the opponents changed from liberal vs conservative to social democrats (and/or communists) vs liberal and conservatives. Liberals usually hold the middle ground but payed the price of being almost destroyed when they weren't left enough for the social liberals that went with the social democrats or right enough for the liberal conservative that went with the conservatives instead. I think Denmark's Venstre seems to be the most successful liberal party in Europe in the 2000's since it has constantly been over 25 % of the votes in recent elections. The Swedish liberal party haven't had that since the 1950's, here they usually are striving to go above 10 % which the last time happened in 2002, but that was because the Moderates totally botched that election.

Wings of Sadness

Today we wake up to a day filled with sorrow after one of the worst acts of terror that has shaken the foundation of Norway as well as the rest of the Scandinavian countries as well as others. An act of violence striking at the heart of my neighbors beyond the forest and mountains to the west. Sadly the hate doesn't end here but poison us all. This poison already took over 90 peoples lives, and even more horrible, the human nature will probably continue to harvest the souls of the innocent. Poison consisting of hate, prejudice and fear. Hope is all that remains, hope that we shall not fall and become savages ourselves. My thoughts and sympathies goes to the victims and those close to them as well as the norwegians I have had the pleasure to know. May this dark nightmare end and the rays of hope shatter the despair that threatens us.

Summer Time

I really don't write that much it seems during the summer. One of the things being that I got a bit addicted when it came to play the Ocarina of Time 3DS, which I cleared twice, 100 % on both. Then I went back home for the midsummer celebration which was a fun time. Then back and try to search for a job. Funny thing happened when one of the municipalities I'm trying to get a job from decided to take a vacation and postponed the hiring process... this makes me want that kind of job even more. Just close down and say "sorry, I'm on vacation, please return in 5 weeks", how awesome wouldn't that be? I heard that there is good to have smaller goals that lead to a bigger one, so one would be this one.

Beside all that I finally got wireless internet via some router or what ever it's called... which has been under my desk for 1-2 years. Yeah, technology isn't my strongest card. Now I can finally have my computer on the web together with my gaming consoles, no need for priority, just use them all... mostly for "tactical and strategic advice" *cough* cheating *cough*. A pity that I must move in the near future (which although it's near is very hard to predict). I also began playing games I have had in my shelfs for a year or so like Resident Evil 5 and Metroid: Other M, but it seems I suck at both of them so I settled for Resident Evil 4, a classic which I'm trying to clear on Normal for the first time (I prefer easy, but they change parts which take away the feeling that you cleared the whole game). On the other hand I noticed that my N64 games I had for the virtual console had lost the save files so I have to finish them once again, which I did for Majora's Mask with Ocarina of Time fresh in mind. Now I got Paper Mario 64 and Star Fox 64 left... although the last one will make it to the 3DS so it might be worth waiting for, the controls are a bit tighter with the 3DS compared to the classic controller, not to speak to my GameCube controller which doesn't work properly (but it is awesome when it comes to target shooting for some reason).