I'm Amazing

No, really. I'm amazing.

During the last two days, I have:
—solved Phaedron's girl problems (twice)
—began and solved my own girl problem
—played sand volleyball twice with a wonderfully sweet young woman we'll name Trina
—ripped through a 50-win streak in my wonderful gaming career, securing a spot for the next Elite tier game we're sure to win
—had nine iced teas (they were delicious)
—drank myself to oblivion after having a relapse of an old ex girlfriend
—hugged my Portal plush toy (damn right I have a Companion Cube)
—bought a pair of spectacles...

...and still wrote 36 of my 54 pages required essays to be written for this week. Two days.

I'm an exceptional human being.

I'm also seeing DJ Tiesto tomorrow night in Cleveland. I hate Ohio, but once in awhile something does go my way.

Forgive me, for I have sinned

Several things have happened so far. I have, in fact, found interesting individuals I enjoy company with. They live on campus, and are present often enough to disrupt my doldrums. I've found something I sincerely enjoy taking my time: gaming. I've become a professional gamer. This happened some time ago, but considering this blog is very new and very uninformed, it's worth mentioning.


The last little detail, at the time that this blog post had originally been in the making, had been a solid foundation being made with the woman I'm interested in. We'll call her May, since I doubt this is the last time I'll refer to her (name changed, clearly). However, that wonderful foundation got rocky almost exactly 20 minutes ago.


I love to argue. Every one of my friends knows this about me. They LOVE it about me. Just adore it. They're my friends almost because of it. However, this characteristic (shortcoming?) got me in a fight with May, which ended sorely. She accused me of consistently arguing for the sake of winning.


May, if you read this: I'm so, so sorry. I don't like to argue to win, I just like to argue. I hate that you got mad at me over something I love to do. It was never my intent to "win" every discussion we've ever had. If that's the picture you got of me, I'm sorry for failing to paint myself truthfully. I feel terrible.


Concede me my sorrow. Please forgive me.

An Afterthought

"Intoxicated" is a consistently good time for me to begin things. I began two relationships lit off my buttocks, more than my share of academic projects, university applications, even several birthday parties: beginning a first blog post isn't a far stretch.


I began this project first entirely as a means to organize many of my daydreams, something I tend to do more often than pay attention to reality. My thought was "if I could just jot down what I dream of, maybe I'll stop doing it". Daydreaming isn't a blessing, it isn't an outburst of creativity or imagination: it's a distraction I don't need on an hourly basis. It's something I wish could stop. I rarely have control over where my daydreams tend to lead, or when they stop or begin.


However, something else entirely has bothered me considerably enough to post of it. I've recently (not recently) been escaped (against my will) from a relationship (that I've loved). Rather than complaining incessantly (I DO have testicles after all), I would rather point out a consistent feature in all my relationships: all promiscuous, recurring sexual, and exclusive.


Since a very early age (very), I've been a person sought after for every kind of intimacy available. In no way is this a bragging right: I'm disgusted by my sexual past. However, in all my relationships, I've been the one approached, rather than the suitor. I have, only once, approached a woman: this ended in spectacular failure. Imagine a toddler wooing a well endowed 20-something tramp, and asking for obscene, wild sex. That's how bad it was. My point is: I've never needed the courage to really take a chance in a relationship. I've been handed, consistently, all I've ever wanted on a silver platter. I hate this.


In my 'promiscuous' phase, the women I would be with would immediately, after the night or after the sex, obtain my number, my e-mail, my contact information, anything they could get their heads around in order to see me again. These women would fast turn into recurring people in my life, pathetic people, worthless people that I'd confide in, depend on for my confidence and self-esteem. However, once they've been in the "recurring sexual" phase, they immediately want to go farther. I used to be a person who couldn't deal with "farther": I would break contact, and never see them again. I never trusted (rightly) any of these women to have the capacity to handle me in a relationship. They were liars, they were cheaters, they were the bottom rungs of personalities, and they were the people i put my faith in to make me feel good.


It didn't take long for me to 'ascend' to the relationship level. I grew out of my promiscuity, and fast turned to a "relationship whore". Many of my friends know when this change happened. Suffice with: it was sudden. Quite literally an overnight change. However, the only change I really experienced (in hindsight) was the type of relationship I was seeking, not the manner in which i treated them. I still was very, very sexual; I still relied my personal confidence on the other; and I still was very, very distrusting.


I have refused again and again my fault in my relationships. It has always been insanity on the other, carelessness, worthless personalities and morals. I've been cheated on, I've been thrown aside for other men, I've been lied to in every relationship I've had--my only request of any person, never lie to me. I have denied all of their mistakes to have been a direct result of my fault most probably to save my own dignity and pride.


My friends insist nothing has been my failing. Eventually however, I need to face the one recurring factor in everything I've known to be wrong in my relationships: me.


Most currently, I'm chasing a female who more than likely will set me aside for another. She knows me, through our conversations, exceptionally well. I'm afraid my experience with her has only added to my prior conclusion: it really is my fault.


Then again, I'm comfortable in my astronomical self-confidence. I may decide not to doubt myself.

Dream Machines

---as taken from Wired (http://www.wired.com/) 14.04 "Dream Machines" by Will Wright, guest author
--written by Will Wright, creator of The Sims and over a dozen other games, including Spore
-original article: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/wright.html


The human imagination is an amazing thing. As children, we spend much of our time in imaginary worlds, substituting toys and make-believe for the real surroundings that we are just beginning to explore and understand. As we play, we learn. And as we grow, our play gets more complicated. We add rules and goals. The result is something we call games.

Now an entire generation has grown up with a different set of games than any before it -and it plays these games in different ways. Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn't a random process; it's the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As the players refine this model, they begin to master the game world. It's a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis. And it's a fundamentally different take on problem-solving than the linear, read-the-manual-first approach of their parents.

In an era of structured education and standardized testing, this generational difference might not yet be evident. But the gamers' mindset - the fact that they are learning in a totally new way - means they'll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption. This is the true impact videogames will have on our culture.

Society, however, notices only the negative. Most people on the far side of the generational divide - elders - look at games and see a list of ills (they're violent, addictive, childish, worthless). Some of these labels may be deserved. But the positive aspects of gaming - creativity, community, self-esteem, problem-solving - are somehow less visible to nongamers.

I think part of this stems from the fact that watching someone play a game is a different experience than actually holding the controller and playing it yourself. Vastly different. Imagine that all you knew about movies was gleaned through observing the audience in a theater - but that you had never watched a film. You would conclude that movies induce lethargy and junk-food binges. That may be true, but you're missing the big picture.

So it's time to reconsider games, to recognize what's different about them and how they benefit - not denigrate - culture. Consider, for instance, their "possibility space": Games usually start at a well-defined state (the setup in chess, for instance) and end when a specific state is reached (the king is checkmated). Players navigate this possibility space by their choices and actions; every player's path is unique.

Games cultivate - and exploit - possibility space better than any other medium. In linear storytelling, we can only imagine the possibility space that surrounds the narrative: What if Luke had joined the Dark Side? What if Neo isn't the One? In interactive media, we can explore it.

Like the toys of our youth, modern videogames rely on the player's active involvement. We're invited to create and interact with elaborately simulated worlds, characters, and story lines. Games aren't just fantasy worlds to explore; they actually amplify our powers of imagination.

Think of it this way: Most technologies can be seen as an enhancement of some part of our bodies (car/legs, house/skin, TV/senses). From the start, computers have been understood as an extension of the human brain; the first computers were referred to as mechanical brains and analytical engines. We saw their primary value as automated number crunchers that far exceeded our own meager abilities.

But the Internet has morphed what we used to think of as a fancy calculator into a fancy telephone with email, chat groups, IM, and blogs. It turns out that we don't use computers to enhance our math skills - we use them to expand our people skills.

The same transformation is happening in games. Early computer games were little toy worlds with primitive graphics and simple problems. It was up to the player's imagination to turn the tiny blobs on the screen into, say, people or tanks. As computer graphics advanced, game designers showed some Hollywood envy: They added elaborate cutscenes, epic plots, and, of course, increasingly detailed graphics. They bought into the idea that world building and storytelling are best left to professionals, and they pushed out the player. But in their rapture over computer processing, games designers forgot that there's a second processor at work: the player's imagination.

Now, rather than go Hollywood, some game designers are deploying that second processor to break down the wall between producers and consumers. By moving away from the idea that media is something developed by the few (movie and TV studios, book publishers, game companies) and consumed in a one-size-fits-all form, we open up a world of possibilities. Instead of leaving player creativity at the door, we are inviting it back to help build, design, and populate our digital worlds.

More games now include features that let players invent some aspect of their virtual world, from characters to cars. And more games entice players to become creative partners in world building, letting them mod its overall look and feel. The online communities that form around these imaginative activities are some of the most vibrant on the Web. For these players, games are not just entertainment but a vehicle for self-expression.

Games have the potential to subsume almost all other forms of entertainment media. They can tell us stories, offer us music, give us challenges, allow us to communicate and interact with others, encourage us to make things, connect us to new communities, and let us play. Unlike most other forms of media, games are inherently malleable. Player mods are just the first step down this path.

Soon games will start to build simple models of us, the players. They will learn what we like to do, what we're good at, what interests and challenges us. They will observe us. They will record the decisions we make, consider how we solve problems, and evaluate how skilled we are in various circumstances. Over time, these games will become able to modify themselves to better "fit" each individual. They will adjust their difficulty on the fly, bring in new content, and create story lines. Much of this original material will be created by other players, and the system will move it to those it determines will enjoy it most.

Games are evolving to entertain, educate, and engage us individually. These personalized games will reflect who we are and what we enjoy, much as our choice of books and music does now. They will allow us to express ourselves, meet others, and create things that we can only dimly imagine. They will enable us to share and combine these creations, to build vast playgrounds. And more than ever, games will be a visible, external amplification of the human imagination.