A friend of mine recently upgraded her cell phone. Now, admittedly I have never seen this new phone, but the powers it has given her are immense and impressive. She’s omnipresent on AIM. Her email is always accessible, as is the internet, and thus, pretty much anything in the world. People tend to refer to this as a digital leash, as if it somehow holds you back or restrains you. In reality, this gives people powers previously unforeseen in humans. It’s a Godlike manipulation of the internet and communications.
It’s certainly a lot of responsibility. Most of the population can’t handle this power. People gridlock interstates and Starbucks lines as they text message. They annoy their co-workers with their breakroom phone use. A society of people incorrectly using their powers is dangerously close.
I pine after iPhone’s and the power they hold and will give me, yet I know I’m not ready yet.* My life’s biggest regret thus far is the lack of any superhuman powers or abilities. I’m fascinated by the NBA, as it’s top performers seem to have higher power level athletic abilities, moreso than any other sport. Football size can be gained, without steroids baseball is an everyman sport, Hockey is Canada. A phone with the internet would appear to be my best chance at anything resembling super powers. Steve Jobs has placed these abilities within my reach. Yet I know I’m not ready yet. I would abuse the power, endlessly browsing the tangled world wide web. A fly caught within it, not the Brown Recluse that rules with a graceful iron fist over his domain.
Perhaps I will be ready when I no longer care for Facebook or fantasy basketball. My uses will be stripped down and streamlined. I will return email with frightening precision. I will spin and weave the world wide web with a clarity and accuracy previously unforeseen. I will reach that God level of communication. One fine day.
As time goes on and technology advances, the human race will inch closer to the Godlike status so many of us secretly desire. Today, the internet on our phones and the ability to communicate with all beings. Tomorrow, the power to teleport? Invisibility? They sound absurd right now, but we have to assume they will come about. Eventually they will become commonplace, as will the power of current phones. Superpowers will fall back into the echelon of a properly and averagely functioning person. It’s a less-than-vicious cycle. The true superheroes are the ones that not only adopt available powers early on, but also complete the phrase and use them heroically. They will adapt to new powers. They will hope from lilly pad to lilly pad on the pond of earth, always staying one step ahead of the rabble they rouse.
I don’t want to be God, I don’t want to play God. I have no knowledge of whether or not a God exists. But when powers comparable to one surface, they must be used properly and thoughtfully.
That’s right: writer’s block circumnavigated, at least for now. As Jay-Z would say: I’m back like Jordan wearing the 45. (That’s right, two colons in two sentences just to show off. I’m feeling good.) Now without further ado, I give you a new essay.
I can hit home runs out of the park, or bowl a perfect game in Wii Sports. I can rock a stadium better than Human Clay era Scott Stapp in full self-importance mode via Rock Band or Guitar Hero. I can even live out all of my Michael Jackson fantasies in Dance Dance Revolution. (I realize that talking about “my Michael Jackson fantasies” may be completely ill advised, but I assure you that all involve dance moves and none involve children or changing my skin color.) If nothing else, this recent trend of video games that replicate activities sure makes me feel like I am extremely skilled.
Critical acclaim has met the Wii’s included sports game and it’s kin for getting kids up off the couch, at least moving around a bit, and getting the blood flowing while playing video games. While I would certainly never discourage physical activity and I absolutely won’t deny that I have a really good time with Wii Sports and Rock Band, I think these games, while interesting, are not good, but rather, are in fact a negative thing.
First of all, rather than playing Wii Tennis, go play real tennis. As stated, Wii Tennis is fun and I’m much better at it than real tennis, but for the love of Jehovah, wouldn’t you rather be playing real tennis? I know I would. My desire to play real sports outweighs my desire to play Wii Sports by about 80,000fold. (Which is like tenfold but much more serious.)
Granted, the learning curve for real tennis is a bit steeper than the learning curve for Wii Tennis, but if I played tennis outside on the court the same amount of time I played Wii Tennis I would be, while not quite Bjorn Borg-ian, certainly serviceable. As it is now, when Drew and I play, I get thrown up and down the court more than the Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland. Kelly probably would have beaten me too had she not been stricken down by an unfortunately timed asthma attack.
If I spent all the time I’ve spent playing Guitar Hero actually playing the guitar I would be, well, better than I am now. I’m fairly certain, had I actually put those precious hours to practicing real guitar, I could make my way through Either/Or, and I put the least amount of hours in out of all my roommates. My 995 group might have the second coming of something Beatlesesque if those Rock Band hours were spent melding ourselves into a real rock band. I like to think we would call ourselves the Chronicles of Gnarnia.
Second of all, while these games are being lionized for forcing the player to be active, in a way they are actually counterproductive. They have created this odd and unforeseen situation where you are getting good at fake guitar playing skills or fake bowling skills. What is the point? It’s easy to argue that, well, this is what happens in every single video game. There is a large difference though. In traditional video games you may still be developing fake skills, but had they been real, 99% of the time they are skills that you would never develop in the non-video game world.
I’m sorry but you won’t ever be a human sized earthworm who inexplicably not only has arms and legs, but can also grab his body with one of said limbs and use the entire thing to whip enemies. Or for a less extreme (and non-Earthworm Jim inspired) example, you most likely (and hopefully) will never be doling out headshots as thoughtlessly as if were US dollars in England. And be honest, you won’t ever be able to play football against Asante Samuel or basketball against Brandon Roy either. Rather than developing fictitious skills for things you won’t ever do anyway, you are developing fictitious skills for tasks you could normally do in your mundane everyday life. It is seriously counterproductive.
Where does this trend of replicating attainable activities in video games end? Next year will we be playing video games where we virtually cook, or sew, or dress ourselves? How unremarkable and focused will these get?* Has our society really come to the point where we would rather simulate the things we do than actually do them?
Video games should be about escapism and living the life you’ll never live otherwise, not doing things you could just walk outside and do, for real. Now if you’ll excuse me, as excellent and illuminating as this essay has been and is, I need to get back to traveling through time as a sarcastic adolescent turtle to fight an alligator in a vest and a cowboy hat.
*Which makes me come to the conclusion that word processing is to writing as Wii Boxing is to boxing. Is word processing some sort of hyper advanced video game that came about well before it’s time?
I finally stopped being a selfish asshole, fired up Dreamweaver, and added links to my sidebar over there on the right. As per the title, it is all required reading. Take a moment and peruse. You will be quizzed at a later date.
Through some seriously sinister means I managed to get my filthy hands on a new iPod nano. Alright, so my means aren’t sinister (nor are my hands filthy, reportedly they are quite soft), but I could not resist an alliteration. As much as I try and avoid being consumeristic or materialistic, I love this new iPod. Maybe it’s the fact that I have been somewhat masochistically soldiering on for the last three years with an iPod without a screen. My first generation shuffle (or Sex Machine, as I had inexplicably named it in iTunes) had wonderful battery life and was good for running, but was more annoying than Oliver in the OC was when it came to listening to podcasts or audio books. I really did enjoy Sex Machine though, despite some semi serious abuse, and lots of sweat, it survived while I watched more expensive iPod after more expensive iPod die at the hands of my friends and acquaintances.
I had been planning on upgrading for a little while now, but nothing really had fit the bill so far. My music library was too huge to fit on iPods, until the brand new 160gb classic ones were released, but I wanted to avoid a spinning hard drive. I want flash so I don’t go breaking it when I run. The iPod Touch is obviously really cool, but it would be a redundancy if, and when, I get an iPhone (because come on, let’s just face the fact that sooner or later every single person in the world will have an iPhone). As soon as I saw one of the new iPod Nano’s in person, I knew it would be mine. Much like the first time I saw Rachel McAdams, only less creepy and more successful. The thing is very small, as evidenced by the following picture: (Disclaimer: I have ridiculously huge hands, possibly distorting how small the iPod is. Seriously, my hands are way too big, I would certainly be playing in the NBA if it weren’t for my 7 inch vertical leap.) (Note: My phone takes surprisingly decent pictures.)
Anyway, I really like my new iPod. Watching video on it is surprisingly easy on the eyes and looks rather nice. It could be some kind of placebo effect, but I’d swear the sound quality is better than it was on Sex Machine. And I don’t know when iPods started coming with games, but somebody should have told me. The Vortex game has already laid claim to a good hour and a half of my day today. This speaks mostly to how addictive the game is, but also to how I am a worthless piece of shit.
My only complaint so far is how I gingerly carry this thing around, scared of getting the slightest scratch or fingerprint on it. I feel like the science teacher in that one Lost episode carrying the unstable dynamite. I know I will eventually going to scratch my iPod. Just like unstable dynamite blowing up in the arms of a negligible character in a television drama, it’s inevitably going to happen. I’m just going to be overly careful until it does. I suppose another complaint is when my gorilla-esque hands slip off the scroll wheel and I lose a life while playing Vortex. Also, apparently I care too much about video games.
That’s all well and good that I like my new iPod. I’m sure collectively all the people that care is around .3 of a person. The real issue at stake here is what do I name my new iPod. It’s currently called Champion, after my less than ubiquitous middle name. It’s a good name to be my middle name, but I need a better name for my iPod. Any thoughts?
Somehow, this website is a magnet for junk, . No smartass, I’m not talking about what I write, but rather all the junk comments and email I get every day, or Spam if you will (a term that I have never really liked). Wordpress catches the comments pretty well, so I don’t pay much attention to those. The email is a different story. I get a lot of junk e-mail, sent to my john@addictedtowords.com email address, which is to be expected I suppose, since I put it out there so much. My junk filter catches most of it, but I glance through it quickly to make sure nothing is accidentally in there. Most of it is your run of the mill junk about penis enlargement, mortgages, or chicks with dicks, but I got a weird one today from somebody named Schwallie Ades.
It had a link to some website where I could get “Unnique downloaddable ssoftware” (the spelling errors are theirs), which I didn’t go to. Then it had this paragraph, which not only can I make no sense of, but I also cannot make sense of why they included it:
“No traces had been found of his body. Mcintosh as far as
i know, did the late mrs. Welman, at of my domestic water
system, the well was declared feet from me, was a windowthe
window of a house, murder. Normally lance would have smiled
at this, ? I will not bear it. I will write to the prime
to poirot. That was japp. Firstly, you’re ‘the is all this
about ? Answer! I do not know. Curious looking forward to
it enormously. Lord loam. That’s of him, but there was not
a dependent about the.”
Any ideas what that is all about? What’s the point of including it? It almost is random enough to seem like it is randomly generated, but not quite. It makes too much sense, without making much sense at all. As if there is some message I should be getting from the paragraph, even though there obviously is no message to be gotten there. I’ve got nothing, but I keep on thinking. I liked junk e-mail more when it was about rich foreign widows wanting to send me $5,000 cashiers check, and the only thing I had to ponder is what I would do with all that money if it were real. I shouldn’t have to think about my Spam.
Yesterday was my birthday. I’m a year older and wiser, and while old age has robbed me of the ability to bench press 900 pounds, that extra year of knowledge has now made me the smartest man alive. I feel like it is a fair trade-off.
I love my birthday. I won’t lie, all that attention is fun. I’m graduating college this year, and I always figured once I was in college and away from home for my birthdays, they wouldn’t be nearly as exciting. It turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong.* I have fantastic friends who always made an effort to do something fun for me. Whether it’s Mojo and his piñatas full of cat food and taco shells, or Kelly and her misspelled cakes, or most recently Gabe and Drew and the awesome awesome party, my friends always prove how excellent they are. That’s not to mention my wonderful family who always made sure I knew I was missed. Like clockwork, I always get packages and cards from them. I can confidently say I have the best friends and family in the world. Obviously the people I interact with in real life, on a first person basis, mean the most to me, and have the biggest impacts on my birthday. After those though, it’s been Facebook.
Facebook, as I’m sure all of you know, is the social networking website that used to be geared towards college students. Lately though, it’s geared towards anybody. You put in all your info and your requisite quotes about living life to the fullest, and you make your profile. Befriending people on Facebook seems to be a significantly less picky process than befriending people on MySpace. On MySpace you need to watch out for child molesters and Republican presidential hopefuls**, but on Facebook I think I am friends with pretty much anybody I have ever met. That means that Facebook knows the birthday of everyone I have ever met, which means when I log into Facebook every day (and I inevitably do log into Facebook every day) I get a friendly reminder of who’s birthday it is that day. And with an effortless few clicks I can wish them a happy birthday, and presumably that they do something fun and wild. It really couldn’t be easier. Along with the microwave and the six blades on my razor, this is one of the best examples of technology making my life easier I can think of.
I know, it takes 10 seconds to write on my Facebook wall. I understand that these quick happy birthday greetings are pretty superflous, but I love them. I get wished happy birthday by a guy on my basketball team in 7th grade. I get wished happy birthday by a girl I met at a bar last week. I get wished happy birthday by the guy that lived across the quad from me freshman year. Hell, I even get wished happy birthday by my ex-girlfriends! It all adds up to make me feel incredibly well liked and often thought about. It’s incredibly egotistical, and self serving, but I think it is pretty fucking great.
What’s wrong with feeling well loved? It’s my birthday, I can do what I want, and I should feel like I am on top of the world. And after all is said and done, isn’t that subconsciously why we all sign up for these social networking websites? To prove to to ourselves how popular we are.
*That is actually a lie, there was one other time I was more wrong.
**How long until these terms go hand in hand?
In case you couldn’t tell by my exhaustive walkthrough of my favorite Ninja Turtle enemies, I am a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle aficionado. I have tons of the action figures and their gear, but I also was known to take it to the next level and deck MYSELF out as an actual turtle, because lord knows we have all wanted to be a walking, talking, sarcastic, 4 foot tall turtle versed in the art of Ninjitsu. I had some weapons, as well as a bandanna, and elbow and knee pads that my mom made me. The key part of that ensemble though, was the Turtle Comm I had.
The Turtle Comm (presumably short for Turtle Communicator) was basically a cell phone that Donatello invented for the Turtles to talk to each other. I can only imagine that Donatello created his own cell network in the process too, because god knows that Ninja Turtles have no use for 2 year contracts. The Turtle Comm, in some cases, looked like a mini turtle shell that flipped open, with a screen to show who you were talking to inside, in some cases it was more of a slider type thing that still looked like a shell. Come to think of it, Donatello really had something here, as he must have built a tiny iSight like video camera into it, as you were basically video chatting with whoever you were talking to. Not to mention it had the best reception ever, better than any cell phone I have ever seen. Deep in the sewers? No problem, perfect reception. Accidentally got sucked into Dimension X? Not an issue, full bars. It really doesn’t surprise me though as Donatello had a lot of pretty amazing inventions including a portable portal generator.* By the way, for all the technological genius Donatello had, he wasn’t very creative with their names. He pretty much just added Turtle to the front of whatever the thing was, the Turtle Van, the Turtle Comm, the Turtle Blimp, the Turtle Rape Whistle, etc. At first only the 4 Turtles and Splinter had Turtle Comms, but Donatello apparently wasn’t too cavalier about giving them out. April got one, the Punk Frogs got one, even the Turtles’ biggest fan, Zach got one.
Anyway, the toy version of the Turtle Comm wasn’t quite as cool as the real** thing. It was the flip open version***, but instead of a video/audio chat with whoever you were talking to, you were limited to morse code and a static picture of your convo partner. Instead of phone numbers, each friend of the Turtle got a special morse code that you tapped out to get a hold of them. It had a card for each turtle and friend, which had their picture and their code to call them. That said, this thing was still awesome. I had a lot of fun morse coding messages to everybody from Splinter to Usagi Yojimbo. I even let April in on my secret love for her. Although a gentleman never tells, let’s just say she returned the favor.
Now, can you imagine if some cell company made an actual functional Turtle Comm phone? I would absolutely buy one, I could almost guarantee that every male born in the 80’s would buy one. That would seriously be the coolest thing ever, I would rather have that than an iPhone, and I really really want an iPhone. It wouldn’t be small or light or thin, it would be huge and rugged and heavy.**** I want everybody to be able to tell I have a giant Turtle Comm phone in my pocket. I’m going to dig my Turtle Comm up when I go home over Thanksgiving and see how in depth it would be to ghetto fab a phone onto the inside. Razr’s are really inexpensive these days ($0.01 here!), I would absolutely invest in one just to take it apart and use the parts inside the shell of a Turtle Comm. I think I could figure this out, don’t be surprise when you see me with the coolest phone ever sometime in the future.
*I have always wondered how Donatello got to be so much smarter from the Mutagen than his brothers did.
**I’m not sure if the version in the animated TV show would be considered more real than a plastic toy, but you get the point.
***Which I thought was cooler than the slider anyway.
****And most likely waterproof, as you would think Turtle Comm’s might spend a lot of time in the sewers.
It’s only 3 pounds and 999 dollars too! That thing is a monster, but it’s perfect for any aspiring Michael Scofields out there. Now you just need to sneak it into prison…
Some of my favorite tools on this thing are:
A Reamer, which is a tool for scraping stuff off the inside of pipes, but sounds way more intense than that.
Special Key, it’s special, it must be important.
Laser Pointer with 300 foot range. Pretty much anything involving lasers is ok by me
Mineral Crystal Magnifier, I have no clue what that is, but it sounds useful.
Telescopic Pointe, because you never know when you will need to do some long distance pointing.
Metal Saw, which I can only assume is a saw for cutting metal. This is the second best kind of saw behind a bone saw.*
Bottom line, this thing is way too big to ever be useful, and I don’t think they will sell a lot at $999 but there is no denying how awesome it is. And how awesome you are if you actually carry it around in your pocket.
Apparently the internet can substitute for a significant other these days. If we are going by that definition I must be really popular with the ladies. Seriously though, my time spent on the internet (fine, and playing Warcraft III) is probably comparable to time I would spend with a girlfriend. I guess that’s what happens when you are single. Anne Dujmovic of C|Net reports:
“A new poll shows that nearly 1 in 4 Americans say the Internet could be a stand-in for a significant other for a period of time. Among singles, the percentage was even higher: 31 percent. (One wonders how popular such responses as “reading a good book” or “playing with my cats” were to the question of substitutes.)
The poll examined people’s attitudes about the Internet. Results of the online survey, conducted by Zogby International and 463 Communications, were released Wednesday.
The survey also found that there are people willing to have a device implanted in their brain–safely, of course–so they’d have ready access to the Internet. About 11 percent of respondents said so. But more men (17 percent) than women (7 percent) did. (Just think, you could impress many a date and your trivia team would win every week. Although when the suitably impressed person becomes a steady thing, the Internet might get jealous.)
…
The self-esteem of Hollywood hotties is safe for now. Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson and Patrick Dempsey are considered sexier than the iPhone, according to the poll. Respondents were asked who or what was sexier. Berry came in at 27 percent, Johansson had 17 percent and Dempsey got 14 percent. The iPhone tied with Derek Jeter at 6 percent.”
I’ve often felt that the iPhone was about as sexy as Derek Jeter. And sadly, I would probably be one of those people that would have a chip implanted in their brain for instant internet access. All I would need is Wikipedia, even if people would always be telling me I didn’t count as a real source.
I’m sorry but you won’t ever be a human sized earthworm who inexplicably not only has arms and legs, but can also grab his body with one of said limbs and use the entire thing to whip enemies. Or for a less extreme (and non-Earthworm Jim inspired) example, you most likely (and hopefully) will never be doling out headshots as thoughtlessly as if were US dollars in England. And be honest, you won’t ever be able to play football against Asante Samuel or basketball against Brandon Roy either. Rather than developing fictitious skills for things you won’t ever do anyway, you are developing fictitious skills for tasks you could normally do in your mundane everyday life. It is seriously counterproductive.
