My fingers aren't working

I can't seem to type straight. My fingers feel like insensitive lumps of flesh at the end of my hand and they can't seem to translate what I am thinking into words on a page. They feel numb and fat. I keep having to go back and correct words that I've mis-typed and I'm feeling very frustrated by it.

I thought maybe I needed to limber them up, get them moving, get the blood flowing, and that would solve the problem. So I went down to the piano, thinking a half hour of playing would help.

I pulled out the bench.

It fell apart in my hands.

By the time I fixed it, I was even more frustrated, but tried to play anyway.

Didn't work. Can't type... can't play piano either.

This is going to be a very long day.

Perhaps I worry too much

In the neverending saga of the comprehensive exams - will it ever end? - I might have to rethink my schedule yet again. Last summer, I had hoped I would be ready to write by the end of this year. Then around Christmas I revised that to fall next year.

Now I'm scared it might be even later than next fall. I'm trying to figure out how Dwayne's schedule is going to impact mine. He was hoping for the summer externship slot, but instead got the fall one: Oct-Dec. It's out in Holyoke, which is about an hour and a half west of here. A long commute, so we're thinking he would go out Monday, come back Friday (there's an apartment available for the students).

So, you can guess why I'm wondering if fall is the best time for me to write. During the week, I'll be playing the single parent game again - not as hard as it would be with little kids, after all, I mostly need to make sure they eat (healthy) food and go to bed before midnight - but I still will be the only one around to field questions, dole out money, mediate endless arguments about who took who's shirt/shoes/keys, help with homework, give permission to go places etc.

And then when Dwayne comes home on the weekend, I'll want to spend time with him, so it'll be difficult to keep to a study schedule then.

Not to mention how weird it will feel to sleep alone.

Or that I'll be vehicle-less during the week.

Or that I'll just plain miss him.

I know it's a great opportunity for him (the Holyoke clinic is trés up-to-date technologically), but I can't help but feel that writing my exams under such conditions is going to just be harder than it would be otherwise.

But maybe I just worry too much - after all, I might want to write in fall, but that doesn't mean my committee will agree with me that I'm ready by then. After all, I don't even have any reading lists approved yet... unlike SOME people!

Constantine

...and then he pulled out the sacred brass knuckles...

This game has 240 hours...

When you can't get hockey on a regular basis, I guess the next best thing is to get an awful lot of it.

Which is it?

I just spent 6 hours putting together documents for a scholarship application.

Was this:
a) time well spent?
or
b) a colossal waste of time?

I suppose the answer will depend on whether I get the scholarship or not (don't hold you're breath, it's a bit of a long shot)

Wow! Did I understimate that or what?!

While looking for something else, I came across this entry where I write: "I also got a few things straightened out about next year's comprehensive exam proposals (3), but I still have to meet with at least four more people (hopefully no more than that) before I can even think about beginning to read up on the areas before writing the proposals."

Proposals? I was talking proposals back in March?

I SO did not understand what I was getting into - I haven't even started thinking about proposals... I haven't even figured out primary reading lists yet, let alone secondary ones or rationale for a proposal!

Dammit! This process is taking WAY too long! And I'm not getting any younger!

Updating

I've been working to update my Books list - I've got all but one book (that I've finished that is) now listed in case you're interested.

My favorite recent quote? It's from Fire and Ice: “…we Canadians sometimes find our neighbours baffling. Between their rhetoric and our own (the left’s admonitions about the dangers of convergence with the gun-toting free marketers to the south, the right’s insistence that we shed our outdated national differences like garments on a long-awaited wedding night and join our industrious, innovative Yankee friends in an orgy of free trade and economic growth), Americans are reflected in so many funhouse mirrors that it would be remarkable if we saw them, collectively, as anything other than caricatures” (20).

Living here does however help smash some of those funhouse mirrors.

Sharing is caring

...and cleanliness is next to godliness... blah, blah, blah

Posts have been/will be sparse for the next little while. D and I have to share a computer now because his went kaput on the weekend and with the amount we both use a computer, this one's getting a workout! So blogging is low on my list of stuff-I-need-to-do-when-I-have-the-computer.

In the meantime, in the interest of updating the aphorism in this blog post title, I give you a twenty-first century list of aphorisms:

Home is where you hang your @.
The email of the species is more deadly than the mail.
A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click.
You can't teach a new mouse old clicks.
Don't put all your hypes in one home page.
Pentium wise; pen and paper foolish.
The modem is the message.
Too many clicks spoil the browse.
The geek shall inherit the earth.
A chat has nine lives.
Don't byte off more than you can view.
Fax is stranger than fiction.
What boots up must come down.
Windows will never cease.
Virtual reality is its own reward.
Modulation in all things.
A user and his leisure time are soon parted.
There's no place like http://www.home.com
Oh, what a tangled website we weave when first we practice.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to surf the Net, and he won't bother you for months on end.

Courtesy the nice people over at River Deep. (It you're trying to figure out the oh-so-twentieth-century versions these came from, check out their page)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Cartoons & Poetry

Plopping yourself in from of the television and watching cartoons for hours and hours until your mind is numb is a long established Saturday tradition in childhood.

I just walked past the tv where a cartoon character is discussing poetic form in William Blake.

I don't ever remember the Roadrunner or Bug Bunny discussing art, do you?

Implicit patriotism?

I have noticed over the last two years that when people ask where we will go when we are finished school, the Americans assume we will remain in America and the Canadians assume we will return to Canada.

I, however, assume we will go where ever we can find jobs!

Playing Games

Weird coincidence today.

Bookmarked a chapter on "Games as Narrative Play" in a textbook that I want to read before I return it to the library later this week.

But while taking a break, see this article about how video games shouldn't include narrative pieces, or "cutscenes".

In the article, Thompson guesses at why games are incorporating more and longer cutscenes: These Hollywood flourishes are good for dazzling mainstream journalists and pundits. That's because there's still a weird anxiety about adults playing games. Most people still think that video games are sophomoric kid stuff; the ones that have a narrative and emulate the movies seem more serious and, well, mature.

But movie watching (especially obsessive movie watching) is still the province of the young. That's why there are so many annoying teen movies out there... and why the scripts of so many other (potentially) good movies are riddled with easy answers, implausibly happy endings, and other story killers. But I digress.

Thompson explains his objection to cutscenes as one arising directly out of their narrativity, something he implies is antithetical to the pleasure of gaming itself: Playing a game, any kind of game, is inherently open-ended and interactive. Whether you're playing chess, Go, or Super Mario Bros., you don't really know how things will wind up or what will happen along the way. Narrative, on the other hand, is neither open-ended nor interactive. When you're watching a story, you surrender masochistically to the storyteller. The fun is in not having control, in sitting still and going "Yeah? And then what happened? And then?"
That's why cut scenes are such a massive pain in the neck—they enforce passivity. There's nothing more annoying than going on a shooting spree, then having to break the rhythm of play by putting your game pad down for minutes at a time.

He does have a point. Cutscenes do require the player to sit back and stop bashing at the buttons for a few moments. But sometimes that respite is necessary. In their discussion of games, the authors of Rules of Play propose some rationales for including cutscenes: surveillance or planning tool (provide information about upcoming events), game play catapult (where the cut scene explains, or hints at the upcoming action), scene and mood setting (introducing changes to scene or increases in a particular mood as the game progresses), choice and consequence (increases 'real life' feel), rhythm and pacing (rest from intense action), and player reward (visual delight or punishment) (Salen and Zimmerman).

What Thompson is complaining about (at least in GTA San Andreas) is the last, the enforced pause in play that interrupts intense action. This complaint addresses the difference in styles of play and desire for cutscenes between novice and experienced players that Salen and Zimmerman recognize. Experienced players have built up such a familiarity with the conventions of game playing (as Thompson says, there are few 'new' games), that they do not require planning, scene setting, a break from play or a cutscene as reward for successful play. Novice players do enjoy them.

The cutscenes were the parts that I was most fascinated by with The Getaway in part simply because they were cinematic, and I found it interesting to note how my play during the active parts of the game coincided or clashed with the cutscene. Often what I was experiencing during play had very little to do with the narrative of the game, but by structuring the game around the narrative, there was a unity to the play that transcended the repetitive nature of the game. I might be shooting people and driving while playing the game, but there was a reason why I was shooting at them (or chasing them). My 'motivation' for shooting and driving within the game is not simply to complete a level and ultimately win the game, but my character in the game is shooting and chasing these people because they've wronged him. So my player motivation (getting to the next level) is reinforced by my character's motivation (to avenge himself).

I would think that this kind of narrative support for player action inherent in the creation of cutscenes would actually enhance the gaming experience because you would be playing similar games for different reasons (at least according to why your character is doing what he/she is doing). Theoretically, wouldn't the presence of narrative accentuate the uniqueness of each game within a particular genre by providing a different motivation?

But I'm a novice gamer (very novice!), so perhaps there is some part of my argument that is missing because I lack the experience to see it. Thoughts?

Good weekend

Well, it's not over yet, but I think it's fair to say this has been a pretty good weekend. I am trying to get a lot of work done today (hence giving up on invitations to Superbowl parties), but getting a lot done will feel good too.

Yesterday was fun - spent the afternoon with good friends and the evening with my family. Ate way too much. Drank not too much. Just a really, comfortable, happy, good time. (Much, much better than last year's birtday - in fact, I kept this year pretty low key mostly because I was paranoid that my plans would all fall apart again this year - part of my satisfaction with the day was that they didn't.)

Today, much work. It seems the more I accomplish, the more I think I still need to do. Will it ever end? Something similar to what's going on here with Cecilia keeps me coming back to the work though... time's winged chariot and all that.

Odd theme developed in my gift receiving however: received four movies: Quills, Identity, The Secret Window, and Eddie Izzard's Unrepeatable. First one: crazy guy. Second one: crazy people. Third one: Crazy guy. Fourth one: (up till a few decades ago, the DSM III would've labelled) crazy guy.

Meaning?

Maybe I don't want to know!

The ol' nature vs nurture scuffle

Got an email telling me how my cousin's adopted son has been having violent episodes and they are becoming frustrated. Okay, so I can understand that. Parenting is hard. Parenting someone else's kids is even harder (I've seen both sides of that one). Parenting someone else's kids who no longer wants them and you've adopted/fostered must be even harder.

But what got me was the part of the email where she describes the "issues" that might account for why her foster son has violent episodes: "abandonment, illegitimate birth, birth parents are both of a violent nature/violent lifestyle"

???

Okay, so I can see abandonment and witnessing a violent home life ("lifestyle") as reasons why a child might be acting violent. But how does the absence of a piece of paper conferring certain rights and responsibilities upon his parents, a piece of paper that is simply a social convention, account for a violent child? Does the child know this? Is his violence a rebellion against his parents's disregard for this cultural norm? Did he as a fetus recognize that he was in the womb of a woman who did not possess such a paper? What was it?

I'd like to be generous and explain that perhaps she meant something else and it was just a case of bad wording... but having grown up in the kind of environment that she lives in, I doubt it was meant as anything than what it sounds like: a moral judgment of someone else's choices in life, a blaming of the 'sins of the father' on the child. An essentialist notion that does nothing to address the issues her adopted son is facing right now.

Reminds me of the comments made a couple of weeks ago by Harvard University president Summers who seemed to imply in his address at an economics conference that women aren't genetically capable of filling his shoes. Nice refutations: Pharyngula and Michael Berube.

All I can say? Wow. I thought this was the twenty-first century.

Finally!

Finished a 922 page book today.

Sad part is, I began it in September.

But in all fairness to my feeble brain power (as evidenced by such a slow rate of reading) it was ALL lit theory and included this quotation as well as other similar mind-numb-ers.

Uninteresting stuff

I don't really have anything interesting to say, but there are some things that are happening... all rather mundane.

We rearranged our living room/dining room area - it feels like we have more room, but I lost about a shelf of book space. We'll see if it improves living in cramped quarters at all.
The girls now have a computer than can access the internet - and it even has an ethernet card, so they don't have to dial up anymore.
I'm behind in my reading... again!
I got invited to two superbowl parties. Now I not only have to decide if I want to watch the game, but whether I want to watch it with other people, and then, which people I want to watch it with.
So far, my only birthday plans are to go out for lunch.