May

30

Second Life? No thanks, I prefer to focus on my primary one.

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | 6 Comments

Everywhere you look these days you find references to Second Life, a local application-based online, alternate reality where you can develop a character (boy, girl, fat, skinny, tall, short, whatever) and interact with other fictional persons by hanging around a crudely rendered fantasy landscape. (Wikipedia page on Second Life)

I suppose my lack of understanding of this sort of online behaviour trend is perfectly demonstrated by how I created my character: I tried to make her look like me. I made her short, medium build, attempted my real hair and eye colour… What I should’ve done was give myself a mohawk, big boobs, wings, and KISS boots, but my literal mind was in control. I’m rubbish at this fantasy life stuff and I haven’t fired up Second Life since creating a character. My curiosity took me only a few minutes further before I became irretrievably bored by the environment itself and making my character fly.

Another trend I never got into was The Sims. It’s referred to as a “strategic life simulation computer game.” Isn’t real life strategic enough for most people? Do we need more ‘life’ to strategically navigate through? I suppose there’s an appealing God psychology involved with creating a character and willing it through a life and landscape, but couldn’t that energy be used in bettering the real life/real world rather than spending precious limited heartbeats on pixelated simulations?

Perhaps I’m paradoxically old-fashioned when I say that immersing oneself in an alternate reality is a waste of time. Some would say that of the internet itself, which is where I make most of my work these days. I could be considered a digital age heretic for suggesting the simpler pleasure of a book over wasting away hours on a non-existent existence in Second Life or any other number of reality simulations out there. But in my humble opinion, real life is much more worthy of improving over plugging into a meaningless one that only exists on a hard drive.

Escapism is fine, but the plausible psychological damage created by fabricating a ’second’ life in any environment seems like such a grand waste of humanity and potentially detrimental to the processes needed to cope with real life situations. A more healthy endeavour than calculating fictional riches and digi-social behaviour surely is to better our real lives instead of looking to fabricated ones for escapism, success, relationships, and pseudo-improvement.

Second Life? No thanks. I’ve got plenty to do in the real world. ;)
(Don’t even get me started on why I think Reality TV is the next deadly plague leading up to the apocalypse!)

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May

28

Of the river, bugs, and a holiday in May

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

a mill near Pangbourne
It’s been a reasonably good weekend so far. I’ve done a fair chunk of writing on a couple of short stories I’m working on (using Power Structure to attempt to get the plot points crafted properly), and today we went to Pangbourne to hang out on the river front to feed some waterfowl. It was a lovely day - word has it, it’s to be the only decent day of the bank holiday weekend - and so we managed to get out into natural light for a few hours. (Always good for a geek to get out from under the full-spectrum bulbs and into some fresh air and real sunlight once in a while…)

Though you can’t see from the photo, the Mayflies were thick today. A comment about bugs wouldn’t normally seem interesting, but mayflies only live for a few hours up to two days — to have gone out on possibly the only day of their existence was an odd and intriguing addition to the day.

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May

26

Rain and my mom has carnivorous squirrels.

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 5 Comments

Uk Rainy
Rain. Lots and lots of rain lately.

But today? A bit of blue sky peeking through. It’s blustery as hell, but at least the rain has ceased for now.

You know I have a thing for squirrels, right? (say ‘yes’)

I got an email from my mom a little while ago that made me laugh.

Subject: Squirrels, I hope

There’s a chicken McNugget in the wreath on my front door.

M

Carnivore squirrels? It surely is the end of the world isn’t it.

If you’re in the UK, have a swell bank holiday weekend!
smooches~
jEN

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May

24

America’s Top Stories include Vampire Legends

Filed Under irregular, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

While the rest of the world keeps up with the ever changing face of war, politics and * cough * The World Cup (sorry, just not a sports fan), America has its journalistic eagle-eyes trained on the stories that matter most (wait for it…) — check out this screen capture from my RSS news reader this morning*: (click the pic)
Dracula makes CNN news
That’s right. My home country is reporting on Dracula.
Not to be outdone by the real stories of the day, the article delivers this startling fact:

While known and marketed as “Dracula’s Castle,” the Bran Castle never belonged to Prince Vlad the Impaler, who inspired Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula character, but the prince is thought to have visited the medieval fortress.

Say it isn’t so! OK, so the castle isn’t really Dracula’s Castle, but what’s truly important is that the tourists still have a place to go in order to purchase vampire trinkets. (Insert stock gag here: ‘I went to Dracula’s Castle and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.’ The back could say: ‘It sucked.’) Actually, for the sake of having a weak reason to exist, the CNN article does give a bit of canned history on the castle’s past, but unfortunately nothing you couldn’t find out from a brief Googling.

Thank goodness I watch The Daily Show for what’s really going on in my birth country. ;)
*(I keep Google News, BBC, and CNN in there for my broad but basic daily dose of news.)

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May

22

My grandma ignores me

Filed Under expat, tout le fromage | 7 Comments

Well, she did anyway. Many times. In fact, for the past several months my grandma would look upon her recently installed Caller ID and feel threatened when my number came up. I didn’t realise this was happening, and so I tried and tried and tried for weeks, even months, to reach my beloved grandma. She’s in her 80s and so I would always let it ring around 10 times to be certain she had plenty of time to reach the phone. Nothing. I though I was ridiculously unlucky at reaching her. I struck out every damn time. I stopped playing the lottery. No more champion table poker. OK, OK, the last two things aren’t true, in fact, the only card game I can play is UNO, but I did try her less frequently as my unlucky streak forged ahead with every unsuccessful connection. I felt I’d never hear my grandma’s voice again until…

Mom sent an email declaring “Grandma’s home if you want to try her now! Her car is broken down; she’s not going anywhere!” In swift response, I gathered my phone and dialled.

AHA! My chance at last! It rang a few times before I heard her rural-sweet voice, “Hello?”
“Grandma! Love you most!” We always say that to each other.
“Well I’ll be!”
“Yeah it’s been ages! You don’t know how many times I’ve tried to reach you over the past few months! What have you been up to? Where have you been?”

That’s when she fessed up. You see, I caught her this time because she was sleepy, having just been napping in her chair. My call weaselled in before she had the sense to look at the Caller ID. She’d been purposely not answering the phone because she had no idea what the 01144 was before my English phone number and thought it was some pervert caller playing tricks on her! She’d had some crank callers recently and wasn’t taking any chances with an unfamiliar number!

I am absolved for not keeping in touch and we had a good laugh over the whole thing, revisiting the humorous mix-up a couple of times over during our 75 minute long-overdue conversation.

International phone perverts beware: there’s a little old lady in Indiana who’s onto you. ;)

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May

19

you’ve got to be effin’ kidding me

Filed Under irregular, tout le fromage | 4 Comments

Everywhere you look in the world there are Da Vinci Code movie advertisements. In the trains, on the sides of buildings, at bus stops — good Lord people! If I have to see Tom Hanks in a mullet on one more billboard I’ll freak!

Actually, I’m numb to the ads. I think the harder a film is pushed these days, the more I tune it out. Anybody else go into a media coma?

the diet codeAnyway, in surfing my morning diet of RSS feeds I came across someone reporting a book on Amazon: The Diet Code: Revolutionary Weight Loss Secrets From Da Vinci And The Golden Ratio by Stephen Lanzalotta. It gets better… The sticker burst on the cover says: Eat Bread, Drink Wine, Lose Weight. Seriously, it says that.

Wow. I’ve been on the Da Vinci diet with my bread and vino? I feel so enlightened, if not slightly tipsy and voluptuous…

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May

18

On the bandwagon, in a casual way

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 6 Comments

In doing a little research lately I’ve seen the need to check ‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote out of the local library. I do have interest in seeing the acclaimed film Capote, but have actually checked his well known book out by necessary coincidence rather than due to Oscar hype.

I must say, I read the first 43 pages last evening in visual gulps, thoroughly enjoying his command of descriptive prose. There are lessons to be learned through his words and I am an enthusiastic student.

smooches~
jEN

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May

17

Am I on a list now?

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 1 Comment

In the US, the government keeps low-profile tabs on the reading habits of library patrons. Does that happen here in the UK too? If so, I think my half a dozen books on true crime have probably earned me a place on it… heh heh

Looking forward to the strip-search at Heathrow next time I cross through.
You wanna check me where? Meow! ;)

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