My Mom the Gamer
My mother is 64 and has enjoyed playing games since I installed Tomb-Raider on her purple iMac in the late nineties. A few years later, when I got a GameCube, I gave her my old N64, and on a recent visit, I gave her the GameCube.
My Mom playing Resident Evil 4
She has an unusual relationship to her games that I thought I’d share here, which is best illustrated by some quotes:
Resident Evil 4:
- He saved a dog. But then those men tried to kill him, and he shot them. See those are their dead bodies.
- Oh, I didn’t know they were supposed to be zombies, I just thought they wanted to kill him.
- This is silly, why can’t he walk up that incline? It’s not that steep.
Tomb Raider – Legend:
- Oh, I’m so excited to have Lara back in my life!
- She was on the edge of a cliff, and she couldn’t reach the rope to swing across, so she kept falling and dieing.
Zelda Ocarina of Time:
- The little boy went in the whale’s mouth, but then he kept getting shocked by those damn jellyfish.
- He has to throw the bomb in the monsters mouth, but it’s too hard. You do it for me!
As you can see, she doesn’t relate to the game characters as herself, the way most gamers do. I asked her why, and she said, “Well, it’s not me. I don’t look like that.”
She also was just talking about games recently and said, “I think I know why I like those games so much. They put me in another world, like an alternate universe to escape to, and it’s a lot more fun than my boring life.”
Google News mistakes
Here’s a funny collection of what happens when you let a computer do your photo editing for you. I’ve collected these over the years as I’ve spotted them, and it seems that their algorithm has improved lately, so most of these are old but ironic nonetheless.
Move your mouse around the page to read my silly commentary, and feel free to add your own captions in the comments.
Enjoy.
Identity and teh Internets (part 2)
(back to part 1 of this article…)
Being a curmudgeon, I don’t always like it when people write on my Facebook wall, and I don’t feel the need for every person I’ve ever met to see my childhood photos. I also like to use Facebook for social networking with disparate groups of friends, family, business associates, and random folks I’ve met. With this in mind, I’ve spent some time figuring out how to adjust Facebook’s privacy settings to better suit my tastes.
These settings are all hidden to others, so by revealing my method I am partially defeating the purpose of my own system. But in the name of knowledge-sharing (and against my tin-foil hat-wearing nature) I will do so anyway. Read more
Identity and teh Internets (part 1)
(This is a repost from my ESC blog. I’m posting it here again because I’m going to write a second part on how to actually manage your Facebook identity.)
Who am I? Who are you? Who’s that guy?
Questions we are answering at all times throughout our lives. Whether we intend to or not.
I believe we are in a sort of “honeymoon phase” with social networking. Novelty has inspired generations to present themselves publicly to hundreds of observers at a time. Facebook and Facebook Connect present an interesting set of potential futures, some of which are explored in this slide show.
If a celebrity who has lost control of her identity becomes one thing in the public eye, yet that same person maintains a completely separate identity among her close-knit friends and family… then which identity is “real?” Read more
WTF is Pinchie Winchie?
This site is named after a game that Harpo Marx describes in his autobiography, Harpo Speaks!
I paraphrase starting from page 280: The stock market has just crashed and Harpo is in desperate need of a $10,000 loan. His brother Chico brings him to meet a casino owner to try and get the money on short notice. Harpo has never met the guy before, but in his usual playful manner, he invites him to bring along one of his casino managers and play a game of Pinchie Winchie.
Everyone sits around the table and one after the other, pinches the guy to his left somewhere on the face, and shouts, “Pinchie winchie!” Then that player turns to the next player, and pinches him in the same place as fast as possible. Anyone who makes a mistake loses the round.
As they play the game, the casino owner starts to laugh uncontrollably, to the confusion of his employee. This is because the game is not what it seems, and isn’t about following the rules at all. In fact, Harpo has rubbed some charcoal on his fingers, and unbeknownst to the casino manager, each time Harpo pinches him he puts a black smear on his face, causing his boss to crack up laughing. By the end of the game the manager is covered with charcoal, but doesn’t know it and heads back to the casino floor to continue working.
After the game, the Marx brothers mention that Harpo needs a loan, and to their shock, the casino owner immediately goes to the safe and hands Harpo as much cash as he needs and tells him to pay it back whenever he can, interest free.
Years later, Harpo asks him why? Why was he willing to give such a large loan to someone he’d never met before? The casino owner answers that he had so much fun, and appreciated Harpo’s playful nature enough to know that he was trustworthy.
That is the power of play.
