The Literary Equivalent of Throwing a Bottle at the Wall.

     So this was originally going to be some light-hearted piece about how the new Call of Duty came out, and how I hate playing competitive multiplayer and would much prefer something like a cooperative campaign or horde mode, but then I saw that latest Simon Pegg film, The World's End, and got a little depressed for a few minutes. I'm a bit Gary King, see, and I don't want to explain it for fear of spoiling the film for anyone that wants to see it.

     So instead, I'm going to get a little bit introspective, a little gazing of the navel. I'm going to look into the abyss for a bit, and other such pretentious ways of looking at it. See, I've got this problem with socializing.

     Wait, wait, it's not the usual problem. I'm not claiming Asperger's or saying I'm a wallflower with no social skills. Quite the opposite. I've got a ready smile and charm with a smooth voice and a healthy ego (obviously, right?) and a self-deprecating sense of humor. I just really. Really. Really. Hate socializing. I've taken those Meyers-Briggs test multiple times, and come out INTJ 9 times out of 10. I watched House for 7 years before realizing that House wasn't the character I was supposed to be identifying with.

     For my school years I found myself in a situation where I was forced to socialize. And so I did. Despite the goth kid persona, I spoke to pretty much anyone. Talked my way out of being bullied and learned to stare down the ones too slow to follow my evasive logic.

     After high school, I was a complete social animal. I had at least three different scenes that I frequented, and fell in and out of love with a frightening rapidity. Then I went off to university and discovered high-speed internet.

     In retrospect, that might have been one of the things that caused me to leave school, adding up with mental and social exhaustion, a sleeping disorder rearing its ugly, inconvenient head, and being an intellectual at a 100% football school. So I withdrew for a bit.

     Then I moved to Mobile, following a woman and working a shite job, living a very small life. That job didn't last, and I was nearly broke and unemployed and alone, having observed how unstable things had gotten with the woman I'd followed. So I was forced out into the big, scary world again, and threw myself into it. I was a bouncer at a strip club, got ordained in a church, cleansed people's homes and persons of evil spirits, and was social royalty for a while in the larger beach town of Pensacola. Good times, Bianca. I still think of you now and then.

     Then I snapped back again. Didn't leave my apartment for six months for longer than it would take to visit the nice Bahranian gent who ran the corner store a block away in the dead of night. Then my lease was up, and the call of a woman beckoned me to Texas. I went.

     That, though, is a period of my life that you and I, well, we just don't know each other well enough to talk about just quite yet.

     After that ended, though, I was life of the party again. I drank more than I thought possible, dallied with many a lovely woman, and realized just how broken I was when I disappointed one woman in particular that deserved better than I could give her.

     Some health problems coupled with a change in my job (our site shut down, and a few dozen of us got to work from home) contributed to the longest, if not most intense, period of social withdrawal yet. I haven't regularly gone anywhere and done anything since sometime in 2009.

     Anyone worried about me may be relieved to know that I have actually been regularly leaving my apartment here in Albuquerque, where I relocated to six months ago. My health has, more or less, stabilized and while I may not have any friends in the area, I am at least re-training myself in socializing. I don't put my hood up as often, and will often speak to people while I'm out. The only thing is... I'm not sure if I want to. I kind of like the solitude, and I'm having some very real internal conflict about whether I want to rejoin the real world again or not.

But that's enough about me and my problems. Geek culture resumes next week.

The Creed, or I am an Assassin.

Gentle reader, I come today to discuss Assassin's Creed. Not as a game or a series, although I could speak at great length about it, but as a concept. As a philosophy, as a way of life. Specifically, the eponymous Creed itself. What drives these pseudo-ninja, these white-robed zealots? What motivates them to take a life? And how could that fit into a modern society?

The Creed itself is the maxim, the basic guideline of the Assassin Order that must be followed lest you be turned away from your brotherhood. First introduced in the original Assassin's Creed, these rules were reinforced in a scene in which the protagonist, Altair Ibn Al'Ahad, kills an innocent, and is symbolically killed himself in front of the entire Order, stripped of his privilege and badges of office, and forced to re-prove his worth.

I want to take a look at it, and how it might apply to a normal, non-stabby person's every-day life.

• Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent

This is the first, and most important, part of the Creed. In any of the games, if you kill innocents, you lose. Now, political murders are less and less common these days, but there's an important lesson to be had regarding picking your targets and not lashing out against people that don't deserve anger.

• Hide in plain sight

Getting attention and standing out is fine, but sometimes you just want to disappear. Personally, I've found it quite useful to cultivate the ability to blend into a crowd at times, and step out and act like I'm supposed to be there at a moment's notice.

• Never compromise the Brotherhood

The people you consider your closest allies, your family, your friends. Value them, and never put them at risk.

• The Three Ironies
• The Assassins seek to promote peace, but commit murder.
• The Assassins seek to open the minds of men, but require obedience to rules.
• The Assassins seek to reveal the danger of blind faith, yet practice it themselves.

Contradictions are useful things. On paper, it's easy to forget that the real world is not black and white, a field of moral absolutes. The world works, and has pretty much always worked, on a sliding scale of moral relativism and shades of grey. Remembering these things can keep your mind open to new ideas.

The lessons taught by the Assassin Order, which are based heavily on the 1930s novel Alamut (named after the fortress the original Hashashin lived, which in turn was the base of the fictional Assassin Order) are, I believe, still relevant today. Pick your fights, and your words, carefully. Know when to stand out and when to blend in. Protect the ones you care about.  And step back and look at the bigger picture.

I leave you with the words of one Ezio Auditore da Firenze, in my opinion one of the most well-developed characters in all of gaming:





"To say that nothing is true, is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile, and that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that everything is permitted, is to understand that we are the architects of our actions, and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious or tragic."