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[Trapezohedron]

Games and music kept me lucid for a very long time. If I didn't have anything to distract myself with, I'd probably explode into a pile of teenage angst and suicide, what with all the trouble (financial, emotional and familial) I'm facing each day.

@Truean

You are a shining example of what people should be.

[Vector]

Spoiler: Rambling about personal experiences with video games (click to show/hide)

Probably the only reason why I hold up FFVIII as a wonderful game anymore is because I related to Squall so much.  Similarly, Vincent from FFVII, definitely my favorite... two characters who were very bad at talking about their feelings, relating to other people, or seeing a future for themselves.  That feeling, of having so much to say but just not being able to say it, being incapable of showing compassion they felt, really resonated with me.  I also liked how petty Rinoa was.  She reminded me of people I knew.
 
And even more than that, the ending of FFVIII made me cry my fucking eyes out the first time I saw it.  Things got really bad, and were finally repaired in a moment of divine grace.  I know the feeling of walking through a disappearing desert and then knowing the sensation of dying.  Even as a middle-schooler, it resounded with me intimately.  Seifer, too, as his "crusader coat" starts getting more and more frayed, and someone who just wanted to be friends and good ended up making a bad decision.  I probably beat the game 3 or 4 times, leveling up the team to level 100 at least twice and getting all the most awesome weapons.  The only part I didn't ever manage to finish was the card quest.

I also find Metal Gear incredibly cathartic, as everyone here knows.  It sort of helps when friends are short.  You know... bother Otacon, skeeve on Meryl, see people be nice to each other.  The big crying scene in MGS2 was good to see.  I have a hard time crying outside of when I'm either a. really hungry or b. going insane.  I worry a lot about showing negative emotions or weakness to others, or even crying quietly on my own in a closed room, so seeing Otacon totally lose it made me feel more secure.  Watching a fairly bad man become a good one and grow old gracefully and ungracefully in turns, not so much being "the best there is, ever" (legendary, yes, but not "the best the best the best") but just the only one who would or could step in at a critical time (not perfect, just good enough) quelled a lot of fears I've been having about the future.  It was really good for me to see Snake grow old and step away from human contact, looking like he always wanted to reach out but couldn't quite make it.  I really empathized with those moments.

(Similarly to how I'm so bonkers for Dragonball and Sherlock Holmes stories, where both Vegeta and Sherlock royally suck at social relationships)

And even more than that, it helped me rethink how I approached the world.  Everyone in that universe is ridiculous and full of a certain amount of vice, and ends up fucking up endlessly.  The hero makes mistakes, says "well, damn," and keeps moving.  People have weird fetishes and sexualities that don't really fit in little boxes.  People do things for horrible reasons.  I learned about different ways to be masculine, so that I didn't feel so "emasculated" by the painful things I'd experienced.  I love that philosophy of creation, too: every moment something new and wonderful to be discovered.  I haven't found many works with that attitude, particularly outside of comics, video games, and other works made for children.

Finally, I have very few memories of the cousin who died when I was seven.  He was 14.  He played a lot of Tetris, and an old game called battle tanks (I think).  It had the stupidest, simplest graphics and was generally terrible.  I was really depressed for years about it, because no one tried to help me, to talk about it with me, anything.  It was just "he's dead, now move on," and because of my previously detailed problems with self-expression, I was never able to do anything but shut off my expression of emotion to the rest of the world.

Playing Tetris makes me feel a lot better, though.  It's relaxing, and it reminds me not just of him, but of that age of innocence.

[Pnx]

So the power was out, so I played around on my laptop, but eventually the battery was starting to run low, and the internet seemed to have cut out, plus there's only so much Dungeons of Dredmor I can play before enough is enough. So then I took a nap, then went downstairs and made a sandwich by candlelight (it was very romantic, and made me realize all over again how much I love cheddar), then I decided to plug my laptop in so it could charge when the power came back on... Which happened about 30 second later... I guess that was the problem all along, wish I'd done it sooner.

[Gunner-Chan]

In unrelated and suddenly much less interesting news, happy birthday to me. It's a weird feeling, getting older.

Late but... You're getting old jack. You're getting ooolllllldddd.

[Heron TSG]

How games saved my life.

So this is a pretty awesome site.

I think my love of Pokemon is sorta like this.

When my mum and dad split up, I vividly remember playing Pokemon Blue, fighting Misty for the first time. I was very young and had little idea what was going on, but the positivity of that game made me feel like no matter what, things were just going to be fine anyway. Your Pokemon don't die, they just faint. They get back up and keep going. I've really felt like that throughout my whole life. I don't like letting life get me down, because I remember the 'lessons' I've learnt time and again from games, literature, etc. Perseverance is the key.

That is a neat site. I remember that I was playing Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars when my mom and dad split up, I was 9. I was fighting Belome in Kero Sewers when my dad told me that my mom asked him to leave. I didn't really get the whole impact of that at first. I played a lot of games that week, sitting and thinking all the while. I got Pokemon Sapphire a few months later, and my Pokemon career began. I learned quite a few things from that game, perseverance among them. Hell, the most emotionally attached I've ever been to any character in a game was during my Nuzlocke+++ run on Pokemon Ruby. Those games could be pretty powerful, for being so simple.

[Pnx]

How games saved my life.

So this is a pretty awesome site.

I think my love of Pokemon is sorta like this.

When my mum and dad split up, I vividly remember playing Pokemon Blue, fighting Misty for the first time. I was very young and had little idea what was going on, but the positivity of that game made me feel like no matter what, things were just going to be fine anyway. Your Pokemon don't die, they just faint. They get back up and keep going. I've really felt like that throughout my whole life. I don't like letting life get me down, because I remember the 'lessons' I've learnt time and again from games, literature, etc. Perseverance is the key.

That is a neat site. I remember that I was playing Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars when my mom and dad split up, I was 9. I was fighting Belome in Kero Sewers when my dad told me that my mom asked him to leave. I didn't really get the whole impact of that at first. I played a lot of games that week, sitting and thinking all the while. I got Pokemon Sapphire a few months later, and my Pokemon career began. I learned quite a few things from that game, perseverance among them. Hell, the most emotionally attached I've ever been to any character in a game was during my Nuzlocke+++ run on Pokemon Ruby. Those games could be pretty powerful, for being so simple.

For me games have helped me cope with the various issues at home, but I also feel like I've just reverted to them to escape when I should have been confronting said issues, and doing constructive things to improve my life/myself.

[Heron TSG]

Successfully making it through my Independent Film class without a book. The store ran out, but I decided to just charge right in regardless. Luckily there are some other students in my (online) class who like quoting questions out of the book before they answer the questions. I just hope they keep doing that until I acquire a copy.

[Jackrabbit]

I have tried to access wikipedia through reflex action 3 times today despite being aware ahead of time. If anyone else is remotely like me this protest is going to have one hell of an impact.

In unrelated and suddenly much less interesting news, happy birthday to me. It's a weird feeling, getting older.

Late but... You're getting old jack. You're getting ooolllllldddd.

If I end up looking like the Schwarzenegger I think I'm doing a lot better than I have any right to be.

[JoshuaFH]

Given that I had next to zero emotional support growing up and suffered from constant loneliness, I can say safely that the distraction and escapism videogames provided probably stopped me from committing suicide. I was in a bad place for quite a long time.

I just hope that I'm not going back there.

[RedKing]

I have tried to access wikipedia through reflex action 3 times today despite being aware ahead of time. If anyone else is remotely like me this protest is going to have one hell of an impact.

It's rapidly becoming a sort of game for me -- how much info can I glean from speed-reading the beginning of the article before the blackout kicks in?

In related news, Internet arguments grind to a halt for the day as nobody can make complicated assertions or fact-check an opponent's argument. Everything is reduced to "Umm, you're wrong because <insert random ass-pull>."

In an unrelated tangent, happy belated birthday Jack! You know, 73% of Australians share the same birthday as you, including every Prime Minister ever! (this claim valid for today only).


EDIT: Also, my daughter learned about Martin Luther King, Jr. in preschool for the first time this year but she's having some problems with the concept. She keep referring to him as "Martin King Arthur" and insisting that he was actually a king. This conjures up no end of amusing mashup images in my head.

Martin King Arthur slaying the KKK Grand Dragon.
Martin King Arthur and his rivalry with Sir Malcolm X.
Martin King Arthur's speech, "I hath a dream..."

[Tellemurius]

As a responsible adult you will put such nonsense into your child's mind.

[RedKing]

Absolutely. I look to Calvin's dad as a model for making shit up sharing knowledge:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Pnx]

So I went to read SMBC today, and found out the site was blacked out in protest too.

Unfortunately it seems Zach made a little bit of a blunder with one of his links.

... there is legislation right now that could make this sort of thing possible. You may think your government is above censoring comic strips for nerds,
but actually, it's happened before.

[Shakerag]

For all my griping in the Sad thread, I'm atleast happy about the petty accomplishment of building a damn fine standard legal Red/White Weenie Token deck on Magic the Gathering: Online.

It's remarkably robust, fast, and lethal, despite the fact that the combined cost of every card in it is about a little bit less than 5 dollars, and that's amazing considering that the average standard legal deck that can compete in even a remote way costs 20-30 dollars, and the deck that can compete in a damn good way blows the lid off your wallet at $100-200+ easily.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I just finished this game. It was the most protracted fight with the most bizarrely prepared opponent I've come across yet. Nearly everything I did, he had an answer for: I lay my enchantments that make my dudes huge, and he destroys them all systematically. I lay a bunch of dudes, and he Destroy the whole board of creatures clean over and over and over. I try to play my spells that give me more dudes, and he counters them. We eventually got into a protracted battle of attrition where we're topdecking and taking turns taking out eachother's things.

I was holding onto a pump spell for I don't know how many turns in anticipation of my comeback, and I'm desperately fending off this Sun Titan, and eventually build my army back up, find that he was out of answers for what I was trying to do, and I finally win on the 24th turn. To put things into perspective, the average game ends at or before turn 8; So this was a very long match.

And he was throwing around Sun Titans, Phyrexian Metamorphs, Ally Colored Dual lands, and all sorts of things that are individually costed more than my entire deck, and I still won. So happy about that.

Miserly Scroogeness: Innovating to do more with less since forever.

This was just a casual match, but I should tweak this a bit and see if it can stand up in an actual tournament. Probably not since those guys are a serious bunch, but it's worth a try.

*sigh*  This brings back memories.  Too bad I haven't played seriously since ... like ... when those three Urza's sets came out.  Wish I had people to play with around here.  And the money to dive back into it. 

[Jaylow]

i got the green light today to plunder an abandoned house  here from the owner, and found some nice  stuff in the house
an old watch (rocket) from the USSR, two 60 year old closets,  some nice wood crafted frames, few old coins from 60's and 70's i think on is silver(could be other metal)
and a "old" stove, and lots of crappy IKEA closets  and wooden planks  to make something from, and a pile of old metal/aluminum

i got stuck a few times with the car in the snow and needed to dig it out, also always lots of fun

i like it in this way that we live in a trow away socialite (or wel its slowly coming here)