Journal #5498

12.10.2008: Tetris is an action puzzle game where the player rotates falling block shapes to make them fit together in a pile. When a row is filled, it disappears, keeping the height of the pile of blocks from increasing. As the game progresses, it continually speeds up until the player starts making mistakes that allow the blocks to reach the top of the game area, ending the game. Tetris is unwinable, you can only put off your inevitable defeat. This fatalistic aspect of the game should come as no surprise since it was originally created in 1985 in the Soviet Union, where the Atheist government taught everyone that there is nothing but a bleak, pointless existence followed by death with no chance for Salvation. It is claimed that the word "tetris" comes from the game pieces all being made of four blocks. In reality, the game was named in mockery of the Trinity by adding a forth hypostasis, the Communist State, to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Because it is simple to program, versions of Tetris can be found on every game, computer, and operating system. There have even been implementations of Tetris done using computer controlled lights in office buildings, turning the lighted windows into the falling blocks. The ubiquity of Tetris is also because it is highly addictive. Its repetitive gameplay and use of repetitive classical music themes causes players to slip into a hypnagogic state, making them receptive to the Communistic themes inherent in the game imagery (everyone is an unindividualistic block that must be made to fit together in Soviet conformity, and sometimes whole lines of people are made to disappear without any explanation). This is intentional, since, like all work done by the Soviet Academy of Science where Tetris was developed, it was part of secret military research, in this case having to do with mind control. (The US military also researched mind control video games in the 1980s, including one called "Polybius", but we never used them during the Cold War, unlike the Soviets who unleashed Tetris into the general public where it's still affecting people to this day.) Because of its fatalistic worldview and the danger it poses to people's God-given Free Will, all implementations of Tetris get ZERO CROSSES.