Monday, September 24, 2007

Little Magic Glowing Boxes or How video games ruined my perceptions of the real world

If you are a child of the eighties you can remember, to the day, where you were when you first saw a Nintendo in action. If you were lucky you may have caught a glimpse of an Atari 2600 or an Intelevision, however the amazing graphics of the NES destroyed all perceptions of “gaming” as you knew it. That 8-bit succubus knew how to pull you in and keep you there until you were ready to accept its gleaming digital reality. The slick graphics and quick game play of Super Mario were enough to sway my easily gullible , and let’s face it, hopelessly optimistic mind with images of fantastic rescues in the nick of time and good always conquers evil….oh silly, foolish, gullible youth. Now in my thirties I know better than to believe the high paced, gorgeously rendered worlds that the new gaming consoles whore at me but sit and wonder sometimes what life would be like if video game features popped out into real life like I had imagined in those first few moments of Nintendo discovery so long ago.

Imagine this:

You pop out of bed realizing you're late for work. You hurry through your kitchen without time to make breakfast, so you tap the floating question mark box above your head with your fingers crossed that a “magic” mushroom will pop out providing sustenance as opposed to a glowing flower that only ends up giving you heartburn. After devouring your fungal breakfast you hurry to the bus stop just as you remember you left your pass at home. You hurry off around the corner to the floating brick and repeatedly slam your head into them, not in frustration, but in the hopes that golden coins will tumble out of them providing you a way to get to work. After you gather enough brick money you catch a bus and arrive at work, albeit a few moments late. As you walk into the office your boss comes storming toward you with the look of imminent doom on his face. You deftly reach into your desk and pull out the mystical star you have stashed in there, allowing you to ignore his repeated attempt to berate you in front of your peers. After several moments of fury he lets you go (not in a “get back to work” way but in a “if you’re here at lunch I may vivisect you on your own desk kind of way). Now that you have spare time on your hands you decide to see if you can slide down that flagpole on the building next to yours, you know the one that’s always playing music.

Now that I think about it, this is the average day of a casual drug user… That’s why the war on drugs didn’t, and doesn’t, work… it’s not the drugs, prostitution, theft and random killings that drive people to drugs …its’ the slim chance that, just for a moment, they may find the power sword, save the princess and totally change square pyramids from one color to another by jumping on them ( it’s Q-bert people, if you’ve never heard of it go look it up…one of the best mindless, no point to them video games ever) …

Damn you Mario, damn you and the little pixilated, green sewer pipe you showed up in!!!

Friday, September 7, 2007

Pick-up Lines: A How-to For The Have-Nots

Dating can be a strenuous environment for the unaware, unwary and the just plain unlucky, so we here at Real Monkeys Play With Knives (by which I mean me…yes, yes I know the ramifications of referring to myself in a plural context, but the other voices need recognition too!) want to help the lonely, desperate, frightened singles out there, mainly because they are the only ones that will probably take any of this advice seriously.

The ice breaker or “pick-up line” is the classic opening salvo in a chess-like banter of: will you (not likely) or won’t you (pretty much bet on it). In using this classic form of flattery/humor/desperation most people tend to stick to the tried and true one liners that everyone’s heard and a friend of a friend of a friend swears works for them every time. These phrases may have worked great in the seventies but they have gone the way of displaying medallions on hairy chests and “The Hustle” (it’s a dance, look it up… if I have to explain the references I make, this may take some time to read) People are very literal these days and may take your clumsy attempt at seduction the wrong way.

For Example: You’re at the bar and you see a fine specimen of (insert derogatory descriptive here). You manage to get close enough to the object of your momentary lust to talk over the jukebox and you blurt out: “Is it hot in here or is it just you?” Now, your intentions were that they would see a small amount of flattery in your bumbling efforts, think it was cute and continue the conversation with a possibility of this round of flirting culminating in the securing of “digits”. However, in this literal world of ours, he/she/it/they (I don’t know your particular attractions, I’m just trying to help here) may take it as the bar is particularly crowded tonight and you would like some breathing room as you may faint from lack of proper ventilation. Not exactly what you were intending.

Let’s look at another of the classics, shall we:

Perhaps you are at the club and you spot Mr. or Mrs. Right-Now across the floor. You shake your groove thing until you are near them and shout out “What’s a nice boy/girl/cephalopod (you’d be surprised at how often cephalopods get hit on at the bar) doing in a place like this?” Once again the hope is that the object of your desire finds this adorable in some way and continues the conversation. This particular pick-up line is faulty in so many ways. For instance, they may know the owner or be the owner of the club and take it as a personal insult, shiv you on the dance floor and leave you to bleed to death to the beats of Top 40 hits….no one deserves to die like that…or they may roll their eyes and walk away (possibly while squirting ink to disguise their escape route in the case of the cephalopods and some more experienced club goers) … but the most damaging result is the perception they get when they question why you fit in so well in “a place like this” when “nice” people obviously don’t

I guess the lesson here is to be yourself, (unless you’re a disgusting, foul-mouthed, slime ball, then perhaps be someone else for a change) relax, have fun and remember although the object of your attention is not as nearly as scared as you are, it helps to think that they are