Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which those who dream only by night may miss.
-- Edgar Allen Poe
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
It Simmed Like a Good Idea at the Time...
Bet you can't guess how many hours I've spent playing video/computer games in the past year.
The answer: 1
If you don't know me well, this might surprise you because you would think a human under the age of 30 in 2011 would spend considerably more time doing so. If you know me well, this will surprise you because you would expect the answer to be 0. (right?! hahah I know -- I got sucked into Angry Birds one night...)
So we've finally made it to Chapter 2 in the Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs* saga, and get ready, because in case you haven't guessed yet, this chapter is about gaming. ("I think that's what the kids are calling it")
But in true geizer-before-my-time fashion, we'll be discussing one of the earlier breeds of computer games: Sims. But hey! Before you write me & Chuck off, take a moment to consider just what role this pioneer of a game has played in our current culture. Or even just consider how literal an ambassador it is for the general realm of online/computer/video games. What other generation of humankind has actually ever daily invested their own time and life-force into imaginary, inconsequential, terminable representations of their "selves?"
(Asking this made me imagine my great great grandfather coming in from a day of, oh say, building the farm he created out of a patch of barren prairie after moving to a new continent alone at age 18, and spending 3 hours re-enacting the things he did that day with a few sticks with faces drawn on them before tossing them in the fire. I think back then, that would've been called "crazy.")(Either that, or I wouldn't exist, because really -- where would a wife enter that picture.)
Before I go on, I have to say that here, I looked Sims up on Wikipedia and a couple of the basic notes just struck me as being so ludicrous that I have to share them here:
"The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game"
"It is a simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual persons"
"Instead of objectives, the player is encouraged to make choices and engage fully in an interactive environment."
The first two there made me want to punch myself, just for comprising a fraction of a society that has produced the possibility for these sentences to be seriously said. The third one made me gawk in stupefied/bemused horror because, really? We needed to make up a game to do this in? I mean, I'm admittedly a fan of "the scenic route" but...too far, Sims. Tooooo far.
So the other interesting thing about this gaming phenomenon is maybe the (subconscious?) deification of ourselves that is (subconsciously?) assumed when we create and/or act through an avatar. This is the angle Chuck enters his chapter on Sims from:
"I am not a benevolent God. I am watching myself writhe in a puddle of my own urine, and I offer no response. I have not slept or eaten for days. My cries go unrecognized and my loneliness is ignored. I am watching myself endure a torture worse than death, yet I decline every opportunity to end this self-imposed nightmare. Darkness...imprisoning me...all that I see, absolute horror. I cannot live, I cannot die, trapped in myself; my body is my holding cell. I am the master, and I am the puppet," (p.12)
"...some things are just too enchanting (and just too weird) to ignore. Those were my thoughts when I first read about The Sims...a video game where you do all the things you would do in real life if you weren't playing a video game," (p.13)
Seriously. That's what the game is. I've never played it, and I would sooner lose all motor functions than voluntarily do so. Why on earth would I want to spend time I could be doing something in actual life with actual life results/consequences .. doing .. stuff I'm not actually doing .. with utterly no results/consequences ... ? (<-- that's my tie-in for anyone reading this who is (subconsciously?) talking themself out of acknowledging the applicability of this discussion to "games" that are not Sims/"regular-life-based")
(Hey, if I lost all motor functions and you had to take care of me, it would kind of be like Giant Actual Life Sims, huh?) (Wait -- wow -- maybe if we made sick/suffering/struggling people our "avatars"....naaaaah.)
Anyways, speaking of playing God with real humans, Chuck goes on to describe the mundane world of the Sims as the place where you order your Sim to do things like read the newspaper, take a nap, take out the trash, buy oak bookcases, and get a pizza from Domino's (p.13)
"This is the whole game, and there is no way to win, except to keep yourself from becoming depressed. The Sims is an escapist vehicle for people who want to escape to where they already are," (p.13)
My mind wants to take this in 38 directions, but I'll just pick a few for both our sakes.
1. I should shed some light on the dark paragraph I intro'ed Chuck with in this entry (the one about writhing in despairing darkness) -- he was speaking as the person behind the Sim avatar -- in the game there are different settings I guess, for Free Will (eg: if you don't enable some Free Will in your Sim, you literally have to order it to do stuff like "go pee" and "stand up" and "eat")(seriously. punching myself in the face over the fact that fellow human beings have actually done this with their time.) So if you just leave your Sim without giving it any direction...you could find yourself staring at this pathetic being, pointlessly and uselessly "existing." (re-read that sentence, but replace "Sim" with "self") Free Will is an innnnteresting thing, my friends...
2. So the "objective" if you can whittle it down, in this game, is apparently to just keep yourself from becoming depressed. HMMM. Does that sound like a familiar objective? I guess the way in the game to keep your Sim from becoming depressed is to keep engaging it in activities like upgrading its possessions. HMMM. I'm about to use a phrase that, in this context, will probably make a few of us puke or perish, so heads up.
If "art imitates life" ... are we seriously living in a society whose ultimate objective in life is "to just keep ourselves from becoming depressed?"
3. Escaping to where we already are. Again, please apply this beyond Sims, and beyond the realm of gaming. Apply it to any escapist, consumption-based "vehicle" you get in on a regular basis. When it comes down to it, whether it's World of Warcraft or Twilight or sleeping in... we are essentially attempting to some degree to rewrite our reality. And it's not a bad thing necessarily. Imagining and venturing beyond the bland realm of "reality" as we tend to see it through our human eyes is a magical and fantastical part of what we do. But with great power comes great responsibility, right? (<--see, some of the best Truths come in comics)
I don't really have anything wise or clever to say about escapism to cap this entry off, but my old friend JRR Tolkien does:
("the flight of a deserter" vs "the escape of a prisoner")
"Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison walls?"
...
Use it wisely, grasshopper.
The answer: 1
If you don't know me well, this might surprise you because you would think a human under the age of 30 in 2011 would spend considerably more time doing so. If you know me well, this will surprise you because you would expect the answer to be 0. (right?! hahah I know -- I got sucked into Angry Birds one night...)
So we've finally made it to Chapter 2 in the Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs* saga, and get ready, because in case you haven't guessed yet, this chapter is about gaming. ("I think that's what the kids are calling it")
But in true geizer-before-my-time fashion, we'll be discussing one of the earlier breeds of computer games: Sims. But hey! Before you write me & Chuck off, take a moment to consider just what role this pioneer of a game has played in our current culture. Or even just consider how literal an ambassador it is for the general realm of online/computer/video games. What other generation of humankind has actually ever daily invested their own time and life-force into imaginary, inconsequential, terminable representations of their "selves?"
(Asking this made me imagine my great great grandfather coming in from a day of, oh say, building the farm he created out of a patch of barren prairie after moving to a new continent alone at age 18, and spending 3 hours re-enacting the things he did that day with a few sticks with faces drawn on them before tossing them in the fire. I think back then, that would've been called "crazy.")(Either that, or I wouldn't exist, because really -- where would a wife enter that picture.)
Before I go on, I have to say that here, I looked Sims up on Wikipedia and a couple of the basic notes just struck me as being so ludicrous that I have to share them here:
"The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game"
"It is a simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual persons"
"Instead of objectives, the player is encouraged to make choices and engage fully in an interactive environment."
The first two there made me want to punch myself, just for comprising a fraction of a society that has produced the possibility for these sentences to be seriously said. The third one made me gawk in stupefied/bemused horror because, really? We needed to make up a game to do this in? I mean, I'm admittedly a fan of "the scenic route" but...too far, Sims. Tooooo far.
So the other interesting thing about this gaming phenomenon is maybe the (subconscious?) deification of ourselves that is (subconsciously?) assumed when we create and/or act through an avatar. This is the angle Chuck enters his chapter on Sims from:
"I am not a benevolent God. I am watching myself writhe in a puddle of my own urine, and I offer no response. I have not slept or eaten for days. My cries go unrecognized and my loneliness is ignored. I am watching myself endure a torture worse than death, yet I decline every opportunity to end this self-imposed nightmare. Darkness...imprisoning me...all that I see, absolute horror. I cannot live, I cannot die, trapped in myself; my body is my holding cell. I am the master, and I am the puppet," (p.12)
"...some things are just too enchanting (and just too weird) to ignore. Those were my thoughts when I first read about The Sims...a video game where you do all the things you would do in real life if you weren't playing a video game," (p.13)
Seriously. That's what the game is. I've never played it, and I would sooner lose all motor functions than voluntarily do so. Why on earth would I want to spend time I could be doing something in actual life with actual life results/consequences .. doing .. stuff I'm not actually doing .. with utterly no results/consequences ... ? (<-- that's my tie-in for anyone reading this who is (subconsciously?) talking themself out of acknowledging the applicability of this discussion to "games" that are not Sims/"regular-life-based")
(Hey, if I lost all motor functions and you had to take care of me, it would kind of be like Giant Actual Life Sims, huh?) (Wait -- wow -- maybe if we made sick/suffering/struggling people our "avatars"....naaaaah.)
Anyways, speaking of playing God with real humans, Chuck goes on to describe the mundane world of the Sims as the place where you order your Sim to do things like read the newspaper, take a nap, take out the trash, buy oak bookcases, and get a pizza from Domino's (p.13)
"This is the whole game, and there is no way to win, except to keep yourself from becoming depressed. The Sims is an escapist vehicle for people who want to escape to where they already are," (p.13)
My mind wants to take this in 38 directions, but I'll just pick a few for both our sakes.
1. I should shed some light on the dark paragraph I intro'ed Chuck with in this entry (the one about writhing in despairing darkness) -- he was speaking as the person behind the Sim avatar -- in the game there are different settings I guess, for Free Will (eg: if you don't enable some Free Will in your Sim, you literally have to order it to do stuff like "go pee" and "stand up" and "eat")(seriously. punching myself in the face over the fact that fellow human beings have actually done this with their time.) So if you just leave your Sim without giving it any direction...you could find yourself staring at this pathetic being, pointlessly and uselessly "existing." (re-read that sentence, but replace "Sim" with "self") Free Will is an innnnteresting thing, my friends...
2. So the "objective" if you can whittle it down, in this game, is apparently to just keep yourself from becoming depressed. HMMM. Does that sound like a familiar objective? I guess the way in the game to keep your Sim from becoming depressed is to keep engaging it in activities like upgrading its possessions. HMMM. I'm about to use a phrase that, in this context, will probably make a few of us puke or perish, so heads up.
If "art imitates life" ... are we seriously living in a society whose ultimate objective in life is "to just keep ourselves from becoming depressed?"
3. Escaping to where we already are. Again, please apply this beyond Sims, and beyond the realm of gaming. Apply it to any escapist, consumption-based "vehicle" you get in on a regular basis. When it comes down to it, whether it's World of Warcraft or Twilight or sleeping in... we are essentially attempting to some degree to rewrite our reality. And it's not a bad thing necessarily. Imagining and venturing beyond the bland realm of "reality" as we tend to see it through our human eyes is a magical and fantastical part of what we do. But with great power comes great responsibility, right? (<--see, some of the best Truths come in comics)
I don't really have anything wise or clever to say about escapism to cap this entry off, but my old friend JRR Tolkien does:
("the flight of a deserter" vs "the escape of a prisoner")
"Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison walls?"
...
Use it wisely, grasshopper.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
the sky is falling
falling
down
and i apply my
paper crown
to
matted hair
on
wounded brow
i sit alone
and wonder
how
the velvet on my
happy throne
has worn away
exposing bone
(the skeleton
of someone's son..)
but ho now!
where, praytell, have gone
the rubies
i had
set upon
my sceptre here
in yesteryear?
their light's gone out
for good
i fear
or is't mine eyes
that cannot see
their crimson lips
smile back
at me
i cannot tell
for darkness falls
across the the land
between the walls
like homeless
in a hearth
there sprawls
a lifeless ash
a soot the calls
away
the happy memory
of flames
that danced
in revelry
of home
that housed
a family..
falling
down
and i apply my
paper crown
to
matted hair
on
wounded brow
i sit alone
and wonder
how
the velvet on my
happy throne
has worn away
exposing bone
(the skeleton
of someone's son..)
but ho now!
where, praytell, have gone
the rubies
i had
set upon
my sceptre here
in yesteryear?
their light's gone out
for good
i fear
or is't mine eyes
that cannot see
their crimson lips
smile back
at me
i cannot tell
for darkness falls
across the the land
between the walls
like homeless
in a hearth
there sprawls
a lifeless ash
a soot the calls
away
the happy memory
of flames
that danced
in revelry
of home
that housed
a family..
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Be Mine?
I was watching an MTV show the other day that reminded me of my last entry in the suspended Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs* saga, and it inspired me to pick the ball back up on that. The show was called My Life as Liz -- it appeared to be a documentary-ish project by a high school girl in a cookie cutter Texas town -- but then it turned out to be a disappointingly dramaticized variation on that theme, heavily scripted and influenced by what I'll assume are the musings of a twentysomething girl who perhaps lived (or imagined) a similar theme within the context of the recent era of high-school-movie social indoctrination.
What am I talking about? That's a great question. I think I'm getting to that... Right, so: ValVillage girl with edgy haircut in town of vapid Texan beauty queens aspires to escape drone culture with the aid of her loyal band of witty/geeky guy friends by making controversial film class projects, etc etc ... it's an interesting concept that I'll maybe save for a different entry, 'cause the tie-in to this entry is -- are you with me still? -- turns out that one of her geeky guy friends is in love with her. Of course, right! How can you possibly hang out with a fellow human and not fall in love with them!?
I think the last SDCP* entry set this up for a foray into the (now ancient) realm of When Harry Met Sally. I never actually saw this (1989) movie until I was in college, but as Chuck confirms (pg.8): I didn't really need to see it to know it.
If you haven't seen it, allow me to summarize: guy and girl meet, have discussion that lays down the thesis "men and women can never be 'just friends'," go their separate ways, meet back up, exist "as friends" through series of life events, and inevitably end up destined for each other (with a bunch of dramatic junk in between). Familiar, right? Basically every movie since this one has been a spin on that concept, with the exception of some horror movies I guess. (<-- maybe an exaggeration)(but maybe not)
Maybe this is a great time to write this entry -- Valentine's Day is fast approaching, which, when combined with this cinematically endorsed worldview, perhaps produces heightened levels of delusion in the friend-love cortex. Hmm..yes...
"When Harry Met Sally...gave a lot of desperate people hope. It made it realistic to suspect your best friend may be your soul mate, and it made wanting such a scenario comfortably conventional. The problem is that the Harry-Met-Sally situation is almost always tragically unbalanced. Most of the time, the two involved parties are not really 'best friends.' Inevitably, one of the people has been in love with the other from the first day they met, while the other person is either (a) wracked with guilt and pressure, or (b) completely oblivious to the espoused attraction. Every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less. But When Harry Met Sally gives the powerless, unrequited lover a reason to live," (pg.9)
I suspect that the propogation of this notion is one of the core contributing factors of our current state of melodramatic narcissism. We are all walking around starring in our own personal reality shows, and this is the perfect torturous subplot. If we aren't seeking out "friendships" either to (a) comfort ourselves with (or practice on) a "friend" who admires us or to (b) get our foot in the door to become "the friend" someone we desire ultimately ends up destined to be with, chances are good our "friends" are secretly doing this to us. Whaaat?! I know, right?! A terrible thing to acknowledge.
I'm not saying all friendships fall under these shady umbrellas, but I think a lot of them do or will to some extent. But besides that, the main point Chuck and I are heading towards isn't that we all need to be suspicious of our friends' intentions, or that we need to gear up this week/end to overanalyze everything that happens (and doesn't) on Valentine's Day.
The point is: we need to stop and realize where our daily relational agendas are rooted and informed.
(see also: are you heading into your days subconsciously intending to hold the world and its inhabitants up against the plot of an 80s movie you never saw in hopes it all aligns?)
I've always loved fairy tales, and one of the great things about them is the practical social instruction inherent in them. Humans learn best through story, and what better way to learn it's a bad idea to wander into the woods alone and to trust strangers with sweets than to have the terror of a cannibalistic witch in a candy house branded into your brain?
Some folks suspect these types of tales are inappropriate or irrelevant, or even socially misguiding, including one of Chuck's college professors who accused them of being "part of a latent social code that hoped to suppress women and minorities," (pg.9) He and I will agree here that adults being concerned about the social damage fairy tales have the capacity to inflict on children isn't an issue.
"'The Three Little Pigs' is not the story that is fucking people up. Stories like Say Anything are fucking people up. We don't need to worry about people unconsciously 'absorbing' archaic secret messages when they're six years old; we need to worry about all the entertaining messages people are consciously accepting when they're twenty-six. They're the ones that get us, because they're the ones we try to turn into life," (pg.10)
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