For Truth, Not Martyrdom

    Sometimes I’m not sure why I keep up the ravenous. I shouldn’t have to search for reminders, yet I find myself seeking them in crevices of high and low only to emerge from the median empty handed as beautiful as usual with bruises on my ego. It’s where I’ll always be within or without you, somewhere stuck in the limbo of your absence.

The Lakeview Theory

    It seems I had it right (write) from the relative start of this page. Lingering on 1e rests “Ground Zero,” and in case you forgot let me refresh the Pensieve: “The greatest position of control would be using past abusings for my heART.”

    Unkillable; this is me, thus I spoke. Are we not all but less illustriously wordy Zarathustras? I receive the highest honor today and forever always after, although it’s my fault for always ripping it from myself. The possibility of triumph rears its head today.

    I can do this because I can do anything. “The descent had destroyed me, and yet, I lived.” Ravenously I shall return, divine and avenging myself, my committing to revenge upon my “brothers” of equal capability and political opportunity. This handicap has made me more.

    By crippling by venom wings you still-birthed a new five star that I will transfigure to the six letters of my name, and! I am not half-price or on sale. My only clearance is the destruction of my demons, doppelgänging as the ironic dichotomy as the death of you. I will gaze at you—no! I will glare at you, O abyss, for now you shall fear me. The greatest entity to ever live, cloaked in reds of the cosmos. I am Goldilocks today and forever after always, I am man becoming the Übermensch one playful skip of a knitted knot at a time. I shall make the Hiltons hang their heads in shame, I will clutter my Monopoly world with black future paint.

    And now, I’d like to take you with me.

The unbeneficial crops of FarmVille

     So the post I have been working on for hours magically deleted itself, remind me again why I thought it'd be a good idea to trust Blogger to not magically delete my post again? I knew I should have used Office, despite it being a pain in the ass for the type of post I was making.. anyway, not going to get upset over it, no need. Besides, objects don't have agents to get angry at, right everybody? Haha.

     Instead of my personally productive post, I'll take this time to express how ridiculous I think it is for people to play games like FarmVille and Mafia/Dragon/Vampire/etc. Wars.

     I've been wanting to get this publicly off my chest for a while now. Truthfully, and I'm going to be honest here even though this has a possibility of provoking insult within people of my family, I think it's pathetic to waste expansive amounts of time taking care of virtual crops and animals, or shooting virtual members of the mob for fake money. I see people around me, intelligent people capable of great productivity, wasting their lives playing these games for absolutely no gain. Sure, it may be as little as thirty minutes a day, but typically it's hours, if not their entire day.

     In a way, it's hypocritical of me to say anything negative about these games that have taken the web by storm. I played Everquest 2 for a good two years or so, and avidly at that. I raided—the most hardcore level of play—every single night for hours on end outside of my normal play time, which was from when I woke up to when it was raid time. Regardless, I quit the game because I recognized it was pointless, an absolute time sink because I gained nothing intellectually from it that I couldn't have received elsewhere faster, and I was wasting away in front of a screen physically, emotionally, and mentally.

     Of course, I took EQ2 to an extreme that I haven't witnessed in anyone with the games cluttering Facebook, but still the negative effects remain the same.

     I won't accept the excuses "I play it to relax" or "it's what I do in my personal time for fun"  or any variation of the two as condonable reasons for sitting in front of a screen clicking away at things that don't matter or even physically exist. There are plenty of other activities that can be partaken in for relaxation or pleasure that are also productive, sometimes even equally.

     You could try reading a book, an article (of something related to news outside of celebrity gossip), a newspaper. You could walk the dog, plant a real garden, or do fun outdoor activities like hiking, boating, cycling, or whatever you would perceive as enjoyable.

     Don't play a video game (outside of games like Brain Age, but even they should be played sparingly as they are still games), don't read trash magazines. They are pointless, unproductive, a waste of time, and negative to your life whether you recognize it now or not. You might actually come to discover—like I did—that if you quit now partially unwilling, you'll discover why it was so important, beneficial, and positive later on that you did.

     I cannot help but mentally and often physically shake my head when I witness my loved ones partaking in these unjustifiable activities. The world is a beautiful place, more magical than any religious writing, fairytale, or website. Don't offend it by experiencing it vicariously through the internet by personal choice of laziness.

An unwelcomed ex floats back into my life.. Pt. 3 - Wiitarded

     A few days ago I wrote about finding the video game Twilight Princess, and how I was looking forward to playing it in spite of my ex-boyfriend. Well, I tried that after crawling through the front door at 3 AM. That was my first mistake, my second, third, infinite, is that I was deliriously exhausted, starving to the point my stomach was in knots, eating sour gummy worms without a drink, in tight jeans not meant for lounging, and Wii-tarded. I put the game into the Wii, and it didn't magically play like I expect from technology. I cursed Nintendo and Googled the problem on my Blackberry while putting in Animal Crossing to see if it was just Twilight Princess that was messed up, but Animal Crossing didn't work either. Suddenly a light bulb illuminated over my head, "Maybe it's upside down Alexis."

     Of course it was. Once I figured that out, I excitedly put fresh batteries in the back of a Wiimote. Crushing my dreams, when I selected the game, the Wiimote's lights just blinked a few times and shut off. Persistent, I put new batteries in the other Wiimote, but the same thing happened. Back on Google, I discovered that you need to either get a Wii mock-Gamecube controller, or plug in your old Gamecube controller.

     For ten minutes I searched all over that tiny white box, pressing in every little door so they'd pop out and reveal their hidden confusion. While I tried figuring out the purpose of all the little sockets, I realized that I obviously had the misconception that Wii's were simple. Apparently I was very wrong. Anyway, by the time I found the Gamecube controller sockets I was too tired to be bothered, plus I didn't want to find out how inconveniently short Nintendo had made the Gamecube controller cords.

     It's been days since then, and playing Twilight Princess has been lingering in the back of my mind as a fun idea. I've bused around the Gamecube more times than necessary, especially considering I haven't even plugged it in yet. I might bring it to Gainesville tomorrow so I have something to do in the hotel, but I probably won't play it there either. Regardless, I like this trend. The Gamecube is similar to a pet now, I almost want to give it a name to make people laugh at my ridiculousness. (Any suggestions?)

P.S. Apparently I'm not just Wiitarded, I'm also 360-tarded. (That one doesn't even make sense and it sounds condescending, but oh well.) Last night my friend Dave--my best friend actually, you should check out his blog--let me borrow his copy of Doppelherz, so I tried playing it in the Xbox 360. Halfway through the film, I got the red ring of death. After finding that link, I realized my theory about what was wrong last night is completely incorrect, and it just overheated. Weird!

An unwelcomed ex floats back into my life.. Pt. 2

I haven't had many light-hearted posts lately because I haven't been "blogging" lately. I like to consider what I've posted to COSA18 recently to be "essays". Not essays in the sense of dreaded college homework, but essays in the sense that philosophers, professors, and scientists refer to long explanations or opinions on a predetermined topic. I hold neither of those three professions—although I suppose "philosopher" is self-proclaimed—but I still consider my work to be worthy of that titling. In the very least, I dream it will be one day.

Tonight I began mapping out a long entry, but it was a personal rant rather than something beneficial to you besides the possibility of my drama being entertaining in its obscurity. Likely, it would have caused problems were it posted tonight like planned. Normally I could care less, because if something I write has to do with someone else, it has to do with me too. (I don't just talk shit about people for amusement and entertainment.) However, when it comes to my family I muster up sensitivity. The creation of COSA18 helped me realize that although all personal experiences will eventually be exploited, there is a time and a place for personal stories to be shared and sometimes that exploitation countdown clock isn't ticking towards "right now". So for now I will keep my mouth shut about things that could harm others.

A while back I wrote about an ex-boyfriend—we'll give him the fake name Jacob for confidentiality, others mentioned later on will have fake names as well—who floated back into my life unexpectedly and demanded I return a video game to him. Like I said before, a video game, really? He just turned nineteen and he may be a guy, but I believe there are way more important things to be doing with one's time, like school, friendships, or even my least favorite, relationships. I've played quite a few RPGs in my day, but the intensity someone would have to feel to create a new Myspace just to harass their ex-girlfriend they broke up with and cheated on to get a now $15 video game returned bewilders me.* Who does that!? Anyway, I told him to buzz off when I got the message, and haven't heard from him since besides a standard follow-up "you suck Alexis, I hate you" message before he deleted his hours old Myspace.

* I played the MMORPG Everquest 2 for a few years and quit as best in my class on my server. Even more impressive, my server was the largest of the game’s. Pretty cool fact about me, even though it was a complete waste of time.

A few days ago I was cleaning out my room at my dad's house and  I confronted the lousy reality that I needed to clean all my DVD/video game cases and get them all safely back to their original homes. (A task that is still unfinished, having seasons of Roseanne and The Cosby Show has become a huge nuisance on my life, especially when all the disks from a season are the same exact color.) I was popping open Gamecube cases absentmindedly when all of a sudden there Link was, staring me back in the face with his slanted anime eyes. The precious little green dress-wearing man that Jacob couldn't live to see another day without harassing me without.

You know, funny story about Twilight Princess. Unless my memory fails me—it isn’t—I purchased, or technically my dad purchased, that game when it first came out at around $50-60 for part of Jacob’s Valentine's Day present. Does anyone else find this a bit odd, or is it just me? What kind of jackass does it take to cheat on someone, and not just by making out with someone else which wouldn't have even been that big of a deal, but no, to sleep with some random fourteen year old freshman that has horrible conceptual tattoos and crusty facial piercings (bringing that up was immature but it's true), break up with their current girlfriend that is of appropriate age (not really relevant, but still, he was almost eighteen), and then come crawling around years later like the repulsive slimeball they are and ask for a Valentine's Day present to be returned? That would of course be my first serious boyfriend Jacob. Woe. Is. Me.

I don't believe in karma even though I find the quote "my karma ran over your dogma" ridiculously clever, but if it exists and I'm believing in the wrong thing, perhaps this is it— The whole reason Jacob and I ever dated is because I went after him so fiercely that I'm surprised I didn't grow a dorsal fin in my pursuit. Samantha, my ex-girlfriend of two years, and I had just broken up because of a lot of typical high school drama, but the final straw was when she told me she was going to keep dating me, but pursue Jacob in hopes of having a chance. Smartly, I ended our relationship, but as part of being a spiteful fourteen year old, to get back at her I went after Jacob in psuedo-infatuation. How he missed the signs of my insincerity are astounding—in one instance I cornered him after class and bluntly asked "So are we ever going to be together or am I just wasting time?", which is very untypical of girls that actually like the person they're querying—but somehow he did. It didn't take but a week or two, and I had him. Over a short amount time I grew to like him, and eventually love him.

I think my problem is that with Jacob and Samantha is that I got into relationships with them before I liked them. I grew to love them because it was easy, which wasn't fair to me or either of them. Since then I've broken free of that potentially harmful habit, and the reward was love that is incomparable. Nowadays I have zero compulsion to talk to Jacob or Samatha, but when it comes to my most recent ex-boyfriend Rodger, I would call him right now if I could.* Of course that could just be because my memories of Rodger are of greater lucidity than Jacob or Samantha, but I like to believe that it's because I willingly fell in love with Rodger—something I always reminded him of to assure him he was special—because it makes me feel human, soft, emotional, and all those other adjectives that men like to use to describe their tender woman with.

*Of course I could technically, I know he'd answer without a doubt. I've actually had to tell him multiple times to leave me alone. I meant "if I could" in the sense that it's not within my personal boundaries to allow that to happen, therefore it cannot.

It'd be pretty difficult to get the game back to him considering he deleted his Myspace and exists on no other social networking website. I have a phone number but I'm not sure if it's still the same, and I'm not going to go out of my way to find out so I can have an overall unpleasant experience by seeing his ratty face again. Besides, I bought it and even though it was a gift, that's too old school for this chick to abide by. I happily proclaimed in real excitement when I found it, "Someone's going to be having fun as Link tonight!"