Sunday 5 December 2004

Pic of the day: Heroes. We all want to be one, right? (Screenshot from City of Heroes.)

Sleep vs truth, 1-0

Today was another day where I did not sleep all night. That makes sense, since I slept during daytime yesterday. And today I slept for 9 hours, waking up at 1 AM on Monday. Go me.

It is not because of the computer games. The only multiplayer game that I play, City of Heroes, is bustling with activity at all times of day or night. Indeed, it is a bit on the crowded side during the peak hours of American time, so it would make sense for me to follow a European day rhythm instead.

Speaking of which, it is pretty clear that CoH will be coming to Europe soon. This is evident from the fact that a major storyline now is changing the Fifth Column (where the villains act all Nazi and have German titles like Unteroffizier, Nacht and Nebel) is being taken over by some other sinister organization that totally changes it from inside.

The real reason is of course that you can't introduce CoH in Europe with Nazi-German style villains. The Germans would be offended. Which they have no reason to, because the Nazis actually were German and they were every bit as evil as Nazis are supposed to be. And if today's Germans don't like to remember that their granddad was a bloody baby murdering villain, too bad. (Of course not all of them were, just a whole lot.)

Much as I'd love bashing Germans in particular, this is a normal human trait. The otherwise quite interesting strategy game Colonization managed to very realistically portray the European take-over of the New World, without in any word or picture touching on the aspect of black slavery. In Norwegian history books, the Vikings are a lot more civilized than in the English ones, and tend to be artists, traders and explorers rather than baby-killing, burning, raping hooligans.