Video Games: The Other Kind of Book.

I'm going to break down a fairly arbitrary list of "The Arts" (capitalized because they're all so very important) in order from high-brow to low-brow. Some of you may not like this list.

1. Books
2. Film
3. Music
4. TV
5. "The video-games"

Now, pretty much all of you will tell me that this list is bullshit in one way or another. You're probably right. I shouldn't have ranked them in the first place. But this isn't my personal list. It's the list I imagine most people who unironically call themselves "intellectuals" would make if asked. Snobs, all of them. you could make the argument that music is higher art than film or whatever, but what's important here are the ends: books are at the top, and video games are the bottom. Now, I'm sure you don't agree with this order (as I've said a bunch of times already), but would you agree that this is sort of the way the average person would rank them? Even people who love video games might rank these things the same way. But the "self-depreciating culture of gamers" diatribe has already been been written. I think.

I've always found it interesting that the bookends (pardon the loose pun) are what I'd call active entertainment. Film, Music, and TV all happen without your go-ahead; you're a captive audience, in a way. They will proceed without any action on your part. You can control the flow of narrative, but that's optional. And a recent development.

In both books and video games, you're forced to do the storytelling yourself. You have to physically engage yourself in the story to see it through. Both books and video games both have linear narratives. Now, games offer more freedom of expression in that regard, but most modern games have a set story, and your goal as the player is to see it play out. Many games have diverging storylines, but so do some books. Choose-your-own-adventure stories are one example. House of Leaves is another, different example, with its many diversions and sub-plot. 

The big difference in a storytelling sense is that it's harder to advance the story in game than in a book, and that brings me to my next point. When comparing games to books, we usually only see the storytelling side. But when you expand the point to all of books, you can spot another clear comparison: textbooks. Video games that don't focus on story (your Pac-Mans, Mario's, etc) focus on learning a system and using it to complete a challenge, the same way that a math textbook would; they introduce a concept, show you how it works, have you apply it in several ways. A review, and then a test. 

When you combine the two comparisons, you get a pretty good metaphor for what video games are: a textbook with a story. You know those "story problems" you encountered in high school that made you angry because you couldn't work them out, or because you thought Sally was an idiot for holding three apples in her hand when she was the supermarket because she could've just used a bag? Turns out, that's kind of what video games are.

I don't mean to degrade the quality of storytelling in games, but you see my point. Video games are much closer to Books than anyone gives them credit for, and maybe we could use this to shape our discussions in games. Video games take a lot from movies, television, and music, but their closest relative is actually the book. Maybe now we could move video games' position on that list I made up a notch.

A Blog About Hats

In the last year, I've taken quite a liking to baseball caps. I don't know why I like them, but I know when it happened; during the summer, I really hate the way the sun shines. I know I can't do anything about it, either, so I wear hats instead. I like the way hats feel on my head, obviously. But it also complements my other change recently: keeping my hair super-short. Shaved short.When my hair gets too long, my hat feels wrong when I wear it, so I know when to cut my hair. These two forces mean I don't have to put to much work into my hair. At least, I don't think it does. Does it?

The problem I've encountered is that I've lost all sense of knowing when and when not to wear them. Is it wrong to wear them inside all day? The sun's not there and I can control all the other lighting, so it feels kind of weird, like doing the same thing with sunglasses. In high school, there was a strict "hats off in the building" policy, so even when I gained my initial interest, I couldn't take it as far as I wanted to. Now, professors and the like could care less who you are, let alone what you're wearing, so I can wear hats at school now too. That fact that I'm even writing this much about hats makes me think this whole thing is unhealthy.

A Poem. About Snow.

A million things have to happen today
I can only accomplish five, and I feel like
if I get to do anything that I like, it's a good
day. Everyone is in a hurry, because their
million things are also important to them.
Clear the roads, they say, so we can do
ten thousand more things. The driveway
needs clearing, the test is postponed.
Doesn't matter to me, though; I can look at a
million little pricks of white, and say that I'm
relaxed, and the million things can wait. Don't
they get it? With a sky this thick, you can meet
the sun face to face. It can't hide its mighty glare
anymore. Fuck, I'm at Best Buy now. Three-
hundred thousand things were done today.

Picky Picky

Not being able to decide between any number of things to buy or do must be a trait I've inherited. I drove around the commercial district with my dad this afternoon for about four hours, looking for a single camera. You know, to take pictures with. On a vacation he's leaving for in a week. He kept telling me not to hurry him, but that's the risk you take when you suddenly decide on something like that. For the record, he wouldn't have time to make the buy any other time until he leaves, so this was a bit of hurried purchase to begin with.

Not that I'm much better. I can't decide between Cheese Ruffles and BBQ Lays at the gas station. And I always end up getting something else anyway. I've been on more than one late-night excursion with friends where ordering ended up taking longer than the rest of the visit. And we'll get something completely different than what we wanted than when we came in. We joke about how stupid we are to be doing something like that, then we can't do it anyway. An ironic snake eating it's own plaid tail.

I should probably do something about this. Indecisiveness can't be a good thing. And it's not really like I'm looking for the best or the most bang for my buck, either; I usually know what I'll be getting, but can't help but worry about whatever ramifications eating French toast over regular eggs and pancakes will bring. I should buy a timer that shocks me when I take too long. I'll make the same decision either way.

'Negro' is a Spanish Word Too, You Know

Of course, "negro" is not "nigger", the word that's been replaced by "Slave," in Huckleberry Finn in newer editions. I won't dive into a debate about who's right or what's offensive to whom; that's not the point of this post. Besides, you've probably heard and read countless viewpoints about the topic from several people you know or respect. And, having not yet read Huck Finn, I can't exactly have as strong a say as those who have, could I? Eh, maybe, but in either case, that's not what I want to do here.

But as someone who speaks Spanish as much as they speak English, I've perhaps found both "negro," and "nigger" less offensive. Negro, specifically, is commonly used in Spanish, since it's literally "black". The stove is black. Es negro. It's a harmless term to us. But recently, knowing full well the context of the term negro, I've had a reversal. My dad told me to lock my door in the Wal-Mart parking lot because there were "negros" there (remember, in Spanish). Disregarding the racism of the actual context of the sentence (referring to black people specifically as people who steal), I know he wasn't trying to be racist by using the word. But the actual term, along with its racial context, still caused me to call attention to it.

Still, I still use negro to describe things that are black. I have to. Saying that black things are "oscuro" (dark) is not too far from saying that black things are African-American, as funny as it sounds. It's not like I don't recognize the difference and say negro when referring to something black in English. Just saying it with a American dialect ("knee-grow" in English vs. "neh-groh" in Spanish) changes the word. "Moreno" is another story entirely. And for the record, neither should be banned from books to appease teachers who think that simple being around a word affiliates you with its context.

So I Tried Watching Blade Runner This Morning

I got about forty minutes into it before I decided I should go take a break, then haven't gone back to it. I turn my brain off around this point in most movies, and I've had to take several brakes during any movie that's longer than ninety minutes long, or isn't completely grabbing me.

I don't know what it is, really. I'm tempted to say that I just have a short attention span. I can usually get through a whole movie if I watch it in a theater, but I don't know if that reinforces that fact or disputes it. I've spent way longer watching tens of videos on the internet. Maybe it's that when I watch a movie at home I'm easily distracted by the computer, and at the computer I have access to all the things I constantly check? I tried watching a movie away from my computer once, but that failed. I tried again with the TweetDeck app on my iPod, but that didn't make it much farther.

Even with stuff like Memento and Taxi Driver, which I just watched last year and would easily rank among my favorites off all time, I still find it difficult to watch a whole movie from beginning to end outside of a theater. I honestly, I don't really like going to theaters. I feel like I'm a captive since I paid money to see a movie there. It happens with games, too, but only if I'm not too invested. Even then, I'll take frequent breaks to do other stuff when I don't really have anything important to do right at that moment.

Maybe I'm that douchebag everyone references when they say that the internet has ruined our culture, turned is into mindless multi-taskers or whatever. I don't feel like it. I mean, I make fun of people who whine on Facebook all the time. I hope I'm not a hypocrite.

Friends Through Language Barriers

My dad can understand English, for the most part. Early on in our lives in America, he decided to take several ESL courses to enhance his English-speaking skills, so that he'd be able to get a better job, one that didn't involve working with bosses who were screwing him out of pay just because they knew he didn't have many options. Even after we moved to Nebraska, he continued to take the courses, long after my mom stopped taking them. Short version, he can now communicate effectively, as long as you keep it simple.

Anyway, in his most recent round of ESL courses, he met someone in a similar situation. My dad's friend was a Japanese immigrant who also needed to learn English to get a better job, and they became friends through the most recent course. After a few months, around Thanksgiving of '09, he invited him and his wife to come eat with us, which is when I formally met him (he'd been by a couple of times, but never long enough for me to get to know him).

To me, their interactions are as heartwarming as they are funny. These two men are bound together by a language neither completely understands, and so they make heavy use of gestures and other forms of sign language to get their points across, and use English to tie their messages together. They talk about cars, wine, sports, and a variety of other topics using their hands more than their mouths, and it seems to work, as far as I can tell.

For whatever reason, it reminds me of children, who connect their disjointed sentences with motions to help them communicate. Watching two grown men break down language barriers this way reminds me of the power of human ingenuity. Is it wrong that every time I see them together, and can't help but say," Awww..."? As though I were patronizing them? I hope not.

I'm not a Media Expert

My Steam "Favorites" list, which I use to keep track of what games I haven't played but want to, is over twenty-five items long. My Netflix Queue is over 200. My Amazon Book and Music lists are expanding rapidly. And what am I doing with my last week of from school? Watching the Deadly Premonition Endurance Run on Giant Bomb.

You could call it procrastinating. It more or less is. But for me, telling myself that I have to play Braid, watch Blade Runner, read The Drunkard's Walk, and listen to London Calling is starting to feel like work. So I just do the "fun" thing and play games I've already played, listen to my iTunes library on shuffle, and read magazines while watching T.V. that's just there to be background noise. These enormous laundry lists are starting to pile up, so I should probably cut down and prioritize, since the intimidation of pure size is probably why I avoid them.

This comes from a side of me that believes I should be "Media Literate." My childhood was deprived ("deprived" my be too strong a word here) of some of the basic media experiences, and so I'd like to go back and catch up as much as a I can, to expand my point of reference. But I always wonder if I really need to.

If I really wanna watch Blade Runner, I'll do it at some point. Maybe there'll be a party. I mean, I'm doing a pretty good job of watching Burn Notice regularly (YOUCOULDSAYIMBURNINGTHROUGHITBOOM).

On Writing Creatively

I took a creative writing workshop class last semester. Being one of my first college courses period, it was definitely an interesting experience. Aside from reading short stories from a variety of authors and comparing their storytelling methods (which we usually decided were outdated and "worked for the time"), we graded and talked about each of the four stories we wrote in that class. Hashing out minor details pertaining to consistency, continuity, and flow, as well as learning to balance exposition with narrative, was actually the best part about that class. My nervous tick kicked in whenever it was my turn to read my story out loud (which meant my voice and hands were both shaking), but I enjoyed getting to comment on the works of others. It felt like a had a role in shaping the fiction of others, which is something people rarely get to do. Sure, most of the stories weren't great, but I still like a lot of the discussions the authors had about their work.

But the class did make me realize something important, something that I should probably keep in mind going forward: I'm an awful novelist. This isn't a self-hating statement meant to show my modesty; I just realized that most of the stories and worlds I think up don't really work within a completely literary model. I hate detailing every last bit of information about a character's clothes, mannerism, and attitude. I'd rather let visual cues do that for me. Maybe I'm just too lazy to flesh out characters in that way, but I found that I like to skip most details and get to story points.

That's probably influenced by the fact that when I read books, I tend to ignore specific details about a character and just make up my own look based on what I know about them. So I'm wont to have the reader do the same in whatever fiction it is I'm writing, or just use the explicit nature of a screen to my advantage.

Maybe that's why I've stopped reading novels, for the most part. House of Leaves was the last real novel I've read all the way through, and I've leaned more towards argumentative works in recent years. Also, anyone who's read House of Leaves will tell you that it doesn't focus on detailing the environment or characters in extreme detail.

I know that there are probably thousands of novels that would cater to my sensibilities nowadays, but Ulysses is the only one that I've mustered up any interest in. Sounds heretical, I know, but when it comes to fiction, I suppose I'm the kind of person who'd rather see what something looks like than be told about it. Besides, when I read a novel, Edward Norton is usually the main character anyway.

One A Day Introduction

In an effort to blog more consistently, I've joined The One A Day project, something to get people to write more quickly and to get themselves out there on a consistent basis. After reading some of the entires that showed a huge amount of promise, I'd decided that I could use a daily incentive.

I'm going to try as hard as a I can to not write about video games. Namely, because I want to write without feeling the critical mind hovering behind me, telling me that what I'm writing isn't fit for publication. When I write about games, I put in as much effort as possible to make sure it's fit to print on the front page of a major website. Here, I could care less. So, all of you who came here daily for the latest word on video games will have to find somewhere else to go. Bummer, I know. You still read my stuff on Bitmob, though! That enterprise will never end.

So what will happen here? I don't rightly know. I've got a few things in mind for this place, and most of them still adhere to the title of this place, provided you get really abstract with interpretations. Whatever they are, I hope you all read them. Because it'd be a dumb to write without anyone reading. Because I've never done that before.