Why I'm a bad boyfriend, part two; why I'm a bad son, part one
So, jet-lagged Rah falls asleep soon after we return from our dinner at one of the local Japanese steakhouses -- to tell the truth, she was nodding off on the way home. So, do I catch some z's to correlate our time zones? No! I rip a few of her CDs, and then start playing Jardinains. Just a little tiny game, I say. Two and a half hours later, I've bounced my high score from the previous 171,385 to the positively gaudy 1,041,070, and gone from an all-time high level of 14 to 43. (Truth be told, I had another game where I had gotten up to level 24 or so, but paused the game and put the computer and myself to sleep, only to wake up the next morning to an unallocated memory error which destroyed my high score. This is why I was so loathe to quit tonight.)
I realize that this is the second addictive freeware game I've linked to today, but I figure that since a large proportion of my readership consists of recent college graduates (or close enough thereto by my standards) who are currently out of work, this is part of my duty to cull the number of productive members of society. Jardinains itself is a strange mix of Breakout and Elf Bowling (you bounce a ball at some bricks, as is traditional, but now little garden gnomes throw flowerpots at your paddle -- but don't despair -- you can bounce the gnomes!), with some design influences from Lode Runner (it becomes obvious that I think the high point of computer gaming was in the '80s). Chicken Invaders and Jardinains are just two examples of a trend I think looks promising for computer gaming: cruelty towards barnyard animals and the sidhe. I'm not sure why it's so satisfying to take out my aggressions on those who in real life are hardly threatening, but I firmly believe that those damn gnomes deserve all the bouncing I give them! Smug little bastards. (I find myself giving the gnomes the finger if they cause me to lose a "life." I may require professional help.)
So I'm a bad boyfriend, or I'll be one tomorrow when Rah is raring to go and I'm still groggy from bouncing gnomes all night (that, if it is not already, should be a euphemism for something really dirty -- "Hey, baybee, come over here and bounce my gnome"). And to top it all off, I'm a bad son too! My mother, as some of you may know, has just graduated from seminary (she too is out of work -- she favors Free Cell), and will be moving back to Cleveland while she awaits some church somewhere to issue a call for her. She's asked me to run interference for her here while she finishes packing up in San Anselmo, which is cool, but today was the wrong day to ask me for a favor. I procrastinated enough on cleaning my bedroom that I knew the last hour would have to count. First thing I do is call Continental to see if Rahael's plane would be on time. I wasn't rooting for it to be late or anything . . . but there would be a silver lining of more prep time on that cloud were it late. Gack! It'll be half-an-hour early! Urp! Must rush! Must vacuum! Must hide evidence of the rabbit the cats had disemboweled on my carpet! So I was a little panicked, and then the phone rang. My mom wants me to go to the Post Office to get her a P.O. Box. Now, I have this great hatred of standing in line at Post Offices anyway, but I cannot really discuss this when Rah's plane is landing in thirty minutes and I haven't done a thing!
I'm afraid I was a little over-excited. Mom, I'm sorry; I will get your P.O. Box sometime soon. As long as the gnome-bouncing doesn't take up all my time.
In related news, while I was in California, my mother asked me if there was a way her seminary buddies and she could get a website that only they could access, on which they could post pictures and pass messages back and forth. I say, "I think you can have members-only groups on LiveJournal . . . " So now she's getting interested in LJs! (She doesn't know my alias, but really, how hard am I to recognize?)
Ok, I do not want to give my mother my code. I want to use my one and only code to sire someone cool, like Sara or TCH or KdS or Dedalus. Siring my mother -- that's just too Spike.
I realize that this is the second addictive freeware game I've linked to today, but I figure that since a large proportion of my readership consists of recent college graduates (or close enough thereto by my standards) who are currently out of work, this is part of my duty to cull the number of productive members of society. Jardinains itself is a strange mix of Breakout and Elf Bowling (you bounce a ball at some bricks, as is traditional, but now little garden gnomes throw flowerpots at your paddle -- but don't despair -- you can bounce the gnomes!), with some design influences from Lode Runner (it becomes obvious that I think the high point of computer gaming was in the '80s). Chicken Invaders and Jardinains are just two examples of a trend I think looks promising for computer gaming: cruelty towards barnyard animals and the sidhe. I'm not sure why it's so satisfying to take out my aggressions on those who in real life are hardly threatening, but I firmly believe that those damn gnomes deserve all the bouncing I give them! Smug little bastards. (I find myself giving the gnomes the finger if they cause me to lose a "life." I may require professional help.)
So I'm a bad boyfriend, or I'll be one tomorrow when Rah is raring to go and I'm still groggy from bouncing gnomes all night (that, if it is not already, should be a euphemism for something really dirty -- "Hey, baybee, come over here and bounce my gnome"). And to top it all off, I'm a bad son too! My mother, as some of you may know, has just graduated from seminary (she too is out of work -- she favors Free Cell), and will be moving back to Cleveland while she awaits some church somewhere to issue a call for her. She's asked me to run interference for her here while she finishes packing up in San Anselmo, which is cool, but today was the wrong day to ask me for a favor. I procrastinated enough on cleaning my bedroom that I knew the last hour would have to count. First thing I do is call Continental to see if Rahael's plane would be on time. I wasn't rooting for it to be late or anything . . . but there would be a silver lining of more prep time on that cloud were it late. Gack! It'll be half-an-hour early! Urp! Must rush! Must vacuum! Must hide evidence of the rabbit the cats had disemboweled on my carpet! So I was a little panicked, and then the phone rang. My mom wants me to go to the Post Office to get her a P.O. Box. Now, I have this great hatred of standing in line at Post Offices anyway, but I cannot really discuss this when Rah's plane is landing in thirty minutes and I haven't done a thing!
I'm afraid I was a little over-excited. Mom, I'm sorry; I will get your P.O. Box sometime soon. As long as the gnome-bouncing doesn't take up all my time.
In related news, while I was in California, my mother asked me if there was a way her seminary buddies and she could get a website that only they could access, on which they could post pictures and pass messages back and forth. I say, "I think you can have members-only groups on LiveJournal . . . " So now she's getting interested in LJs! (She doesn't know my alias, but really, how hard am I to recognize?)
Ok, I do not want to give my mother my code. I want to use my one and only code to sire someone cool, like Sara or TCH or KdS or Dedalus. Siring my mother -- that's just too Spike.