The Citizen, 2012-03-29, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2012. PAGE 5.
Have you spotted any lately? They
frequently travel in packs of three or
four, but just as often they’re solo. You
seem them clustered around the entrances of
bars, restaurants, hospitals, office buildings
and the like. They’re easy to identify by their
furtive gestures, hunched shoulders and
darting glances over their shoulders.
CBC Radio icon Peter Gzowksi once
interviewed some visiting Russians who had
encountered packs of these creatures bunched
around the doorways of hospitals in the far
north. “It is a great pity, the number of
prostitutes in your north,” one Russian
lamented solemnly.
Gzowski laughed. “Those aren’t prostitutes
– they’re smokers.”
Small wonder that Canada’s nicotine addicts
have been reduced to the behaviour of urban
coyotes – there are fewer and fewer places
they can indulge. Smoking is forbidden at the
zoo in Peterborough, Ontario; at beaches in
Vancouver, White Rock, Arnprior and Orillia;
next to building entrances in all of Alberta, the
Yukon, Nova Scotia and B.C.
As for smoking in restaurants, I’m not sure
if there’s any place in the country where you
can still light up and order a meal at the same
time.
I’m not complaining, you understand. As a
reformed nicomaniac, I’m just as self-
righteous and intolerant of public smoking as
the next person. I’m just saying that anybody
who still smokes has got it particularly tough
in this era of cancer-conscious, clean-air-
zealous, extreme tobacco hostility.
Not to mention having to fork over $10 for a
small pack of gaspers.
It’s more like $15 a pack if you buy your
smokes in New York City. In an effort to
reduce still further the number of New York
smokers, Gotham mayor Michael Bloomberg
has jacked up tobacco taxes to levels that
would make a crack dealer blush.
But New Yorkers are an inventive lot.
There’s a place on Staten Island where you can
buy your fix for only $2.95 a pack.
But this is New York, so there’s a catch,
natch.
You have to roll the cigarettes yourself.
The helpful folks at Island Smokes will
assist you. There’s a cigarette-stuffing
machine on site and mounds of pipe tobacco
(it’s taxed at a lower rate than cigarette
tobacco). You sit on a wooden stool alongside
up to a dozen other hardcore smokers, insert
an empty cigarette paper into a hole, press a
button and out the other end comes a rolled
smoke. Takes about four seconds per unit.
It’s a tiny, legalistic loophole that the
proprietors of Island Smokes are exploiting,
but it probably won’t last forever. City lawyers
have already slammed the owners with a
cease-and-desist order; the tax gendarmes
have dropped by and informed them that
they are in violation of at least three city
bylaws.
Another radio icon, Garrison Keillor, once
wrote a short story entitled “The Last of the
Smokers”, in which America’s final desperate,
defiant clutch of smokers were hunted down,
captured and ‘rehabilitated’ by the minions of
decency. It was a Swiftian satirical piece of
writing, deliberately exaggerating the plight of
smokers to the point of absurdity.
Or maybe not.
Yet another writer (and smoker) thought and
wrote about the Filthy Vice. Kurt Vonnegut
defined the habit of smoking cigarettes as “a
socially acceptable form of suicide.”
Vonnegut had a black sense of humour. He
died, still smoking unfiltered Pall Malls, at the
age of 84.
But with a wicked smoker’s cough I’ll bet.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Where there’s smoke, there’s fire
After a shabby night’s sleep, I awoke on
Saturday morning and through blurry
eyes watched the CBC’s investigative
news program The Fifth Estate and learned
about how Major League Gaming killed a
young man.
Now this really isn’t news. After doing a
little digging, it appears that the episode of The
Fifth Estate originally aired in 2009, although
it was altered over time to include updates and
where-are-they-nows.
The story involved a young boy who was
seemingly addicted to video games. The boy’s
name was Brandon Crisp and the long story
short is that he had dedicated so much of his
life to playing the war video game Call of
Duty, that when his parents thought it was too
much, they took his gaming system away.
Crisp would run away from home and he
would never make his way back, dying from
injuries that were reported to be consistent
with a long fall, landing on his chest.
The story is, of course, tragic. However, as is
often the case these days, the finger has to be
pointed at someone, so why not the makers
of the video game that Brandon loved so
much?
The Fifth Estate report is less a story of
Brandon’s life and how it was needlessly cut
short, and more of an examination of this
generation’s obsession with video games.
Brandon’s parents and friends are
interviewed for the piece, but so too are
Canadian representatives for video gaming
companies, some of Canada’s best professional
gamers (yes these people exist and yes, they
likely make more money per year than you do)
and even one of the founders of Major League
Gaming, an organized league that has given a
home to the world’s best gamers. It is the
National Hockey League of Major League
Baseball of video games.
The CBC reporter puts tough questions to
the higher-ups of the gaming industry about
whether or not people as young as Brandon
should be playing such violent video games
and how many hours children in school should
be playing video games per day.
There is, of course, a rating system in place
to keep children from purchasing games that
are too violent for their age. If their parents buy
the games for them, however, how is that the
fault of Major League Gaming?
In one of the best documentaries of my
lifetime, Bowling For Columbine, Michael
Moore researches a story from his hometown
of Flint, Michigan where a young student
brought a gun to school, shooting another
student to death (follow me here).
The child’s (single) mother worked two jobs
to support her family, one of which was Dick
Clark’s All-American Restaurant. Dick Clark,
like many business owners before him, was
subject to tax breaks because of the business he
brought into communities.
So the mother worked too many hours at her
two separate jobs to be home for her son very
often. The mother’s brother, with whom the
pair was living, left one of his guns lying
around. This, of course, is where the child
found the gun that was brought to school the
next day.
So in Michael Moore’s mind who is to blame
for this senseless killing? Dick Clark of course.
Moore attempts to interview Clark, but gets
nowhere, perhaps because Clark had nothing to
do with it.
So while I feel for Brandon and his friends
and family, I don’t feel that anyone and
everyone should be dragged in as suspects
when tragedy strikes.
Pointing the finger
This column is going to require some
background knowledge to understand
the inspiration. Fortunately, the
underlying message is fairly basic.
The works of the creative; be they authors,
painters, sculptors, musicians or, in this case,
video game writers, own the things they
create.
I’m not talking own in a legal sense. Most
authors probably sign their work over to
publishing houses, most artists turn around
and sell their work (if they’re commercially
successful) and journalists like myself give our
work to our publishers.
Heck, even people who write letters to the
editor lose legal possession of the work as
soon as the newspaper receives it.
So, as surely as these words don’t legally
belong to me, the idea behind them and the
creative process are all mine.
Enter Mass Effect 3.
The Mass Effect series of video games is an
epic that spans three installments.
Players get to create their own hero,
choosing sex, military training and history and
childhood events to create the playthrough
they are interested in.
Throughout the story of the three games the
main character, who is ambiguously called
Commander Shepard to leave room for all the
different variations there are, faces off against
all sorts of different enemies.
The saga is set in the future. Earth has
discovered intergalactic travel that was left
behind by a race called the Protheans.
They have met other species and Earth’s
government has become part of a larger
government that seeks to keep the peace
among all species.
I won’t get too bogged down in the details
but there are different cultures at play; there
are matriarchal societies, synthetic (robotic)
societies and militaristic societies and off-
shoots of every kind.
It’s a rich, deep story that someone could
easily invest a week’s worth of play per
installment in.
With all the additional content available for
the games, I could take a month-long
sabbatical and still not play through the entire
series.
It’s a tale that, if it were in a narrative instead
of an interactive medium, I would consider on
par with Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or
George Lucas’ Star Wars (the original trilogy).
The series ended with the third installment.
I won’t spoil it for any readers who happen
to be playing the game, but it’s suffice to say
any future Mass Effect titles probably won’t
feature Commander Shepard.
And oh how the young players bemoaned
this fact.
“Change it,” they used the internet to say.
There are nearly a dozen (discovered)
endings available depending on your choices
but a good deal of the populace isn’t happy
with the ones they’ve found.
I think that these brats need to wise up.
If they were looking for the main character
to save the girl and the world then they should
probably pop in one of the Nintendo games of
my youth like Mario Brothers or they should
have started watching a Disney flick.
The endings (and yes, I’ve seen multiple
endings resulting from multiple playthroughs)
are great, in my opinion.
They reflect the realities of the world.
I won’t say anymore because, if I happen to
inspire anyone here, I don’t want to ruin it.
So, back to the original point; creators
deserve the right to end their creations how
they see fit.
From a fictional standpoint the life (and
death) of a character exists solely in the mind
of its creator.
You never know what they (the characters
or the creators) are capable of until you get to
the end of the story and see how it all plays
out.
One of my favourite stories as a teen, and
one that just recently finished in a way I love
was Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series.
It’s a departure, in my mind’s eye, from
King’s typical work.
It’s a story of fantasy, of redemption and,
most importantly, of the journey.
The seven book series follows Roland
Deschain, a gunslinger. In his universe
gunslingers are envoys and peacekeepers and
he is from a long line of them.
King writes an afterword in the final book,
where he wants to end the story, that
readers should close the book and just walk
away.
It’s after a high-point; Deschain’s journey
continues and his companions find the life
they want, whether they knew it or not.
But those who aren’t happy with the journey,
those, like these immature cretins who are
clamoring for a different ending who can’t
appreciate a story for what it is, will continue
reading and find themselves worse off for it.
Six months after I finished the last novel a
“friend” (the quotations are there because I
could scarcely consider him as such after he
ruined the story for me) told me what
happened after that.
He said six simple words and in an instant I
knew exactly what happened.
I won’t echo those words because, as I said
before, I’d hate to spoil something. However,
if a reader continues after King’s remarks, if
they look behind the curtain, things get a bit
frustrating and, in the end, they get downright
angering.
But, looking back, I believe that is how the
story needed to end, just as King stated it did.
Sometimes stories don’t end the way readers
want them to.
Sometimes stories don’t end the way writers
want them to, but, having dabbled in fiction, I
can tell you that my experience indicates
writers have no real choice in the matter.
When you imagine someone’s life, when
you imagine someone’s actions, you begin to
know them and how they will react to
circumstances.
And in the end, you know what their demise
or final location is.
The choice to tell that story or not is the
author’s and no one else has the right to
demand they change it.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Creative works owned by creators