How do you know when you play videogames too much?
I have never watched a NASCAR race. Today I went to a family member’s house for dinner and NASCAR was being watched. As I sat to partake, the cars sped around a turn that looked all too familiar. “Hey, I’ve raced this track. Infineon Raceway, right?” Odd looks, I tell you. My love affair with GT4 strikes again.
Yorda! Yorda? Yorda?!?! YORDAAAAAAAAAA!
Yorda?
Do you miss my GT4 pics? I set up a Flickr slideshow for ’em. Your life is now fulfilled.
At a social event last night, I ended up in a conversation about music. This is usually a good tack when at a party and you don’t know many people — there’s always that guy who likes music. We did not, as one might expect, go through the normal ritual of do-you-know-this-band, did-you-hear-that-album kind of stuff. Instead we talked about mp3 players, subscription services, and XM radio. Conclusion: for this brief period of entertainment history, how we get our music is more interesting than what we listen to.
Okay. So, the first two innings of a minor league baseball game will be played on the Xbox, and the other seven will be played by the real teams. Local fanboys have been competing at CompUSA (where else?) to be holding the controllers for those first two innings.
#1 – This is lame.
#2 – Here’s my favorite part of the story: “The idea for the promotion came from the 6-year-old niece of Bryan Williams, director of community relations for the T-Bones.”
How did this go?
“Unkoo Bwyan! You pway game!”
“What’s that, honeybunch?”
“You pway game on TV!”
“Yes, that’s right. I play games on the TV. Videogames. That’s why my brother got to marry your mommy and I still live with mine.”
“You pway game wif men outside!”
“Uh huh, I play baseball in real life too. Well, sometimes the guys let me go get the foul balls for them.”
“You pway boaf!”
“Yes, honey, I play both.”
“You pway boaf! You pway boaf!”
“Wait a minute — that’s a great idea! We can play videogames AND real baseball at the same time! You’re a genius Rita-Mae!”
I’ve been playing Ico, a fantastically good art-piece title for the PS2. It’s just as good as Penny Arcade promises. Yesterday, a friend lent me God of War to try on for size. While I have heard that this also is rather awesome and will get to it eventually, I’m not really in the mood to rip the wings off sirens right now. Apparently, I’m more in the mood to be a twelve-year-old oddly-horned boy and wander around an enchanted castle holding the hand of a quiet ghost princess. Weird.
Need another web game to get addicted to? Swing over here and play Poom!. Brought to you by the UB College Store, apparently.
Memed again. I don’t know if I ever did the last one.
Number of books I’ve owned: Holy Heaven. Okay, I’ll try to estimate. Let’s say…
Fifty kids books. (Pokey Little Puppy, etc)
Twenty Hardy Boys.
Twenty Oz.
Twenty books bought in high school.
Thirty super-cheap “classics”
Fifteen books a semester for four years of college = 120
Twenty books in the last three years.
I’m going to go ahead and say roughly 300.
Last book I bought: I just bought a book today called The Mathematical Experience. The hospital I work at has an occasional used book sale fundraiser, and I saw it there. No idea if its any good or not.
Last book I read: The Code Book. History of crypto.
Five books that mean a lot to me:
Gates of Fire. 100% brilliant. Whenever anyone asks me for a book to read, this is what I tell them. I have two copies, and one of them has seen a lot of loaning action.
Dune. Science-fiction’s supreme masterpiece. One of the few perfect books ever written. Could have been titled How to Become a God in Three Easy Steps.
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. I do not own a copy of this book, but you can always count on Bartleby. Remarkable collection of entries on a wide variety of topics in story and history.
The Hero with A Thousand Faces. Perhaps not surprising considering my previous post.
D’aulaires Book of Greek Myths. I received two different copies of this for my seventh birthday, and I credit it directly with starting off the series of events that made me what I am today.
I’ll leave this open-ended. You got a blog and you want to write about this? Go for it.
My issues with Episodes I and II of Star Wars are well-documented, and anyone who knows me will be happy to tell you that they tried to convince me that they were due to some fault of my own, that I went in to the movies with my standards held too high. Time and again I was told to just go and enjoy the movies instead of expecting anything.
As one should with trusted friends, I took their advice with Episode III, and enjoyed it far more than the others, despite the fact that my issues remained. I forgave the litany of transgressions and sat back to let the Force-filled goodness wash over me.
As the fight on the volcano was about to start, I remembered reading somewhere as a kid — a young kid, as this was before Jedi came out — that the events which took place there were the reason Vader was a machine. I realized at that moment that something I had been looking forward to since childhood was about to transpire. As I was already pleased with my experience, I was in a good mindset to see a scene that even my critical eye would see as canon. I had already seen the worst of how far these movies could get from “good” so what could go wrong?
“Either you are with me, or you are my enemy.”
“Only Sith speak in absolutes.”
So, as the killing stroke, Lucas decided to throw in politics. Up until then, my issues with departures from my concept of the original vision were based exclusively in the world he created. My own politics aside, the fact he would use his movies as a soapbox to discuss current events is a slap in the face to someone who took his opus as a stand-alone. He went into this with the concept that if Campbell’s hero-journey applies to all people at all times in all lands, then a new story with flashy effects could take the lessons of those old stories and bring them to a wider audience. He ended by attacking the statements of one man in present-day America.
As it turns out, my friends were right; I did take these movies far more seriously than anyone should have. I bought into the concepts of the original trilogy, and should have abandoned them when seeing the latest.
I don’t own the ‘Cube or the DS, but I keep going back to this site. I think it’s because I really like the banner.
In other Nintendo-related news, Link is story of the day on Wikipedia. Surpisingly extensive. I’d have a hard time saying much more about Link than “well, he’s got a shield and a sword and dresses like Robin Hood. And he’s a pretty good choice in Smash Bros.”