Tech Olive

As I sat here searching for something new to blame my low-scoring Modern Warfare 2 matches on (we can’t all continue to blame lag, or that new mouse), I figured why not blame myself? Now, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong; I’m not admitting anything! You see, rather than actually admitting that someone is better than me, I am merely pointing out the uselessness of a gamer’s mouse-handed ring finger. Seriously, what do you use it for when gaming?

You see, while mice are designed for the ten-fingered gaming public, just about any mouse that I’ve ever used would only be better if you had a little extra room for your non-clicking fingers to rest, and by process of elimination, I find the ring finger to be the most useless of one’s digits. Try it out, grip your mouse and have a look at your finger placement. Still think you need that finger?

As I marveled at my own brilliance, I decided that a little research was in order to further prove how smart I really am. History offers many examples of self-mutilation or sacrifice to better one’s craft. Now, allow us to educate you with a little of this history.

According to Greek writings, there is mention of a race of female warriors known as the Amazons. The reason I bring up this tribe of Charlie’s Angels-wannabees is because of the tactics these women used to better themselves in battle. The Amazon archers would have their right breast cut or burnt off with hot irons so that it would not get in the way of their bow’s function in battle. Even the name given to this tribe lends a bit of truth to this folk tale; the name is derived from the Greek roots ‘a’ (translating to ‘without’) and ‘mazos’ (meaning ‘breast’). Staying with this theme, medieval archers would tattoo a line across the top of their hand between the thumb and index fingers in order to better set their bow’s grip perfectly center and straight in their hand, thus offering the most accurate and reliable shot possible.

Moving on to everyone’s favorite group of bad guys, pirates (you know, the “kill you and take your ship” kind). It’s no secret that pirates wore eye patches, but many think that these patches were to cover a once-filled eye socket, when in reality, it was so the pirate could go from low-light to high-light environments and could switch the patch to see better in the lighting environment, with one eye adjusted to darkness and one adjusted to the daylight at all times. This eliminated the need to have to wait for their eyes to adjust when going below deck.

Now we find ourselves at the modern-day equivalent of archers, snipers. Many are unaware that snipers have — like the pirates before them — also been known to don all manner of non-dominant eye coverings to ease the strain of keeping one eye closed for extended periods of time, while the other is watching through the scope at the sniper’s target. While experts may argue that wearing an eye patch is a bad idea for snipers, especially for the daytime sniper, because the brain perceiving less light and lowering your eye’s blah, blah. In all reality, the veteran snipers are just mad that rookie snipers have found out how much chicks dig a pirate-sniper, and they want to keep this tactic a secret. Don’t be fooled!

So, with all this evidence before me, I had no choice but to suffer for my craft and dismember my ring finger.

Just kidding! I totally had you going there, but seriously, how useless is that finger? Do we have any readers lucky enough to be missing the ring finger of their mouse-hand? If it wasn’t for all the pain, blood and the fear of infection the mess it would probably make, I would chop this baby off before lunch.