The right cover article at the right Time
Jul. 7th, 2007 06:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmxratedToday is 777 day. I know I'm not the first one to address this, though. Anubis started a thread titled "Damn God it's 7/7/07!!" in the VGMusic forum. I have no two cents for the thread, but I do hope that Harley or Froggy comment it in their author's notes when they update A Rose & a Thorn 5: Resurrection later this morning.
This month's issue of Time magazine came yesterday, and on the cover was some guy who can't get up from under a giant glass of beer. The cover story was about addictions, how they get the best of us, and how we can get control over them. For the past week already, I've been moderating how much time I spend playing Pokemon Sapphire, but even when I'm not playing the game, I've still been unable to focus on learning how to draw until yesterday. (I only spent less than a minute with Adobe Illustrator at a time, but at least it's progress at all.)
Anyway, I gave the article a read, and it was pretty interesting. It never did say anything about video games (which is understandable, since most readers of Time aren't video gamers), but it did talk about addictions in general, such as drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, junk food, etc. I'm not going to explain every detail of the article, but I will go into a few of them.
Somewhere during the article, it is explained that rats and other animals have been used in experiments to see how much control they have over addictive substances. Those that are put into different cages, given different cagemates, or have their daily lives constantly changed are more prone to abuse the drugs in question than those that are allowed to live stress-free.
(There's something I can relate to: Since homework and class projects are a big part of my life every school semester, I tend to wait until the following break to do stuff that I want to do other than play video games. My non-autistic brother Brian doesn't play video games nearly as much as he used to (he still does, though, but to a moderate degree), and he makes big plans for every single weekend, even when his schoolweek is already jam-packed with stuff to do, but then again, autistic people like me can't handle as much stress for the most part as normal folks.)
Talk therapy is one technique used by addicts of all kinds of guilty pleasures. For a lot of people, Alcoholics Anonymous has proved to be a remarkable place to go to overcome alcoholism, but that's not to say that it works for everyone. In fact, for some people, it's not effective at all.
(Sometimes, when I talk to Dad about these things, he says that whatever I plan on doing, I need to treat it as if it's part of my homework, instead of continuing to procrastinate. In fact, when I was on the phone with Brian two days ago, all he could tell me to do was to set the circumstances up so that I couldn't play the game, and then to just use my brain. I don't find statements like that the least bit helpful or encouraging at all, but then again, they're only human, and so am I. Having a time buffer, though, does help. Last Wednesday was not a good time to start with Adobe because I had school the very next day. However, yesterday was a much better time to get started because all I have to do for today, tomorrow, and Monday is read Chapter 2 of my driving text, along with doing a few chores each day.)
In addition to the relevance to my (lack of) prioritizing skills, the very first paragraph of the article (written by Michael D. Lemonick and Alice Park) is also relevant to stuff we've been learning in my Driving classes.
I was driving up the Massachusetts Turnpike one evening last February when I knocked over a bottle of water. I grabbed for it, swerved inadvertently--and a few seconds later found myself blinking into the flashlight beam of a state trooper. "How much have you had to drink tonight, sir?" he demanded. Before I could help myself, I blurted out an answer that was surely a new one to him. "I haven't had a drink," I said indignantly, "since 1981."
That goes to show that one doesn't have to be drunk to endanger oneself or other people on the road; letting a distraction get the better of him or her (for instance, changing a cassette tape while in motion) is equally dangerous.
............................................................................
A while after Mom came home from work last night, Marie had to be dropped off at work, but she and I visited Dad in his workshop. We then headed down to the catboat, but we never actually went sailing. Yesterday was a windy day, and while we were still on the boat (which was never unroped the whole time) we had a brief drizzle minutes before deciding to leave.
On our way to Patchogue, I told Mom that various 7-11 stores across the United States are temporarily changing their name to Kwik-E-Mart in anticipation to the new Simpsons movie that's coming out. It was something I found out about on the VGMusic forum, and I also shared it with Dad while we were on the catboat. Mom asked me if I was interested in seeing the movie when it comes out. I told her I'd watch it, and so did Dad, and I suggested that we invite Marie and wait until Brian and Grandma Barbara are both here before we go see the movie.
Dad went directly home with his van, but I went with Mom to the liquor store. When we got there, she realized that she forgot her pocket book. While we were driving, a thunderstorm started, and we saw five thunderbolts (the actual bolts, not just flashes) directly ahead of us on the way home.
Someone uploaded a MIDI on VGMusic last night for the the World 6 levels in Yoshi's Story. I listened to it, and it really is a remix of some song from The Nutcracker. At first, I didn't know what the song was called, and when I sung it to Mom and Dad (who were watching The King of Queens; I had to wait for a commercial), Dad just told me it was the Nutcracker Suite. I offered to play the MIDI for them on Windows Media Player; Dad wasn't interested, but Mom was.
(The song in question isn't officially listed in the main VGMusic archives yet, and it's not possible to link directly to MIDIs. It's in the Newly Submitted Files archive when you enter the site, and all I can say is, look for the files that were archived on 7/6/07 if you wanna listen to it.)
This month's issue of Time magazine came yesterday, and on the cover was some guy who can't get up from under a giant glass of beer. The cover story was about addictions, how they get the best of us, and how we can get control over them. For the past week already, I've been moderating how much time I spend playing Pokemon Sapphire, but even when I'm not playing the game, I've still been unable to focus on learning how to draw until yesterday. (I only spent less than a minute with Adobe Illustrator at a time, but at least it's progress at all.)
Anyway, I gave the article a read, and it was pretty interesting. It never did say anything about video games (which is understandable, since most readers of Time aren't video gamers), but it did talk about addictions in general, such as drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, junk food, etc. I'm not going to explain every detail of the article, but I will go into a few of them.
Somewhere during the article, it is explained that rats and other animals have been used in experiments to see how much control they have over addictive substances. Those that are put into different cages, given different cagemates, or have their daily lives constantly changed are more prone to abuse the drugs in question than those that are allowed to live stress-free.
(There's something I can relate to: Since homework and class projects are a big part of my life every school semester, I tend to wait until the following break to do stuff that I want to do other than play video games. My non-autistic brother Brian doesn't play video games nearly as much as he used to (he still does, though, but to a moderate degree), and he makes big plans for every single weekend, even when his schoolweek is already jam-packed with stuff to do, but then again, autistic people like me can't handle as much stress for the most part as normal folks.)
Talk therapy is one technique used by addicts of all kinds of guilty pleasures. For a lot of people, Alcoholics Anonymous has proved to be a remarkable place to go to overcome alcoholism, but that's not to say that it works for everyone. In fact, for some people, it's not effective at all.
(Sometimes, when I talk to Dad about these things, he says that whatever I plan on doing, I need to treat it as if it's part of my homework, instead of continuing to procrastinate. In fact, when I was on the phone with Brian two days ago, all he could tell me to do was to set the circumstances up so that I couldn't play the game, and then to just use my brain. I don't find statements like that the least bit helpful or encouraging at all, but then again, they're only human, and so am I. Having a time buffer, though, does help. Last Wednesday was not a good time to start with Adobe because I had school the very next day. However, yesterday was a much better time to get started because all I have to do for today, tomorrow, and Monday is read Chapter 2 of my driving text, along with doing a few chores each day.)
In addition to the relevance to my (lack of) prioritizing skills, the very first paragraph of the article (written by Michael D. Lemonick and Alice Park) is also relevant to stuff we've been learning in my Driving classes.
I was driving up the Massachusetts Turnpike one evening last February when I knocked over a bottle of water. I grabbed for it, swerved inadvertently--and a few seconds later found myself blinking into the flashlight beam of a state trooper. "How much have you had to drink tonight, sir?" he demanded. Before I could help myself, I blurted out an answer that was surely a new one to him. "I haven't had a drink," I said indignantly, "since 1981."
That goes to show that one doesn't have to be drunk to endanger oneself or other people on the road; letting a distraction get the better of him or her (for instance, changing a cassette tape while in motion) is equally dangerous.
............................................................................
A while after Mom came home from work last night, Marie had to be dropped off at work, but she and I visited Dad in his workshop. We then headed down to the catboat, but we never actually went sailing. Yesterday was a windy day, and while we were still on the boat (which was never unroped the whole time) we had a brief drizzle minutes before deciding to leave.
On our way to Patchogue, I told Mom that various 7-11 stores across the United States are temporarily changing their name to Kwik-E-Mart in anticipation to the new Simpsons movie that's coming out. It was something I found out about on the VGMusic forum, and I also shared it with Dad while we were on the catboat. Mom asked me if I was interested in seeing the movie when it comes out. I told her I'd watch it, and so did Dad, and I suggested that we invite Marie and wait until Brian and Grandma Barbara are both here before we go see the movie.
Dad went directly home with his van, but I went with Mom to the liquor store. When we got there, she realized that she forgot her pocket book. While we were driving, a thunderstorm started, and we saw five thunderbolts (the actual bolts, not just flashes) directly ahead of us on the way home.
Someone uploaded a MIDI on VGMusic last night for the the World 6 levels in Yoshi's Story. I listened to it, and it really is a remix of some song from The Nutcracker. At first, I didn't know what the song was called, and when I sung it to Mom and Dad (who were watching The King of Queens; I had to wait for a commercial), Dad just told me it was the Nutcracker Suite. I offered to play the MIDI for them on Windows Media Player; Dad wasn't interested, but Mom was.
(The song in question isn't officially listed in the main VGMusic archives yet, and it's not possible to link directly to MIDIs. It's in the Newly Submitted Files archive when you enter the site, and all I can say is, look for the files that were archived on 7/6/07 if you wanna listen to it.)