Have They Ever Heard of the Internet

Soon to be released on Nintendo Wii:

It's poker, only sexier!

Sexy Poker brings you an entirely new set of unique and sexy women that radiate personality and fun, inspired by famous celebrity sex symbols and today’s hottest sources of sexy content. Unlike other games on the market that offer only one woman, Sexy Poker offers high-quality images of six incredibly alluring women for six times the value and game length. These girls are so confident, they'll bet all their clothes on this game! Read More »

• Offers high-quality images of six incredibly alluring women.
• 3 game modes: 5-card draw poker, video poker, and blackjack.
• Photo gallery, so you can quickly access all of the images you've unlocked

This raises a metric buttload of questions. The first of which is, "how did this get approved by Nintendo?". A press release reveals the truth:

SEXY POKER

Platform: Wii

Rating: M for Mature

Content descriptors: Simulated Gambling, Suggestive Themes

Rating Summary: This is a Strip Poker game in which players engage in games of Black Jack and Poker against female avatar opponents. The object of the game is to win hands in order to remove articles of clothing from still images of the female characters. Nurses, police women, office workers, and sports figures can eventually be stripped down to show their lingerie. The female opponents encourage the player with provocative comments such as, "Perhaps you could be my business partner...for tonight at least?" and, "If you impress me, I might give you my special treatment."

Aha! There's no nudity at all! Which makes only more pertinent my second question: WHO IS GOING TO BUY THIS GAME?

If I wanted to see an office worker or sports figure in her lingerie (or less), I think I could manage without having to spend money and win at poker. Ah well, even if I wanted to, it's been banned in Australia.

Where Analogies Go To Die

From Facebook chat (the opinions expressed herein are not necessarily my own. ):

21:07Brian
by how un-upset i was to let her go
lol i dont feel like a 22yo needs to 'work on' a relationship
there are plenty of fish in the sea

21:08David
thats true brian

21:08Brian
1.3/2 billion

21:08David
lolz

21:08Brian
in china alone

21:09David
however
this illusion that you are under
that relationships
just work
all by themselves
is sadly mistaken

21:10Brian
leul im under no illusion
they 'just work' for a finite time
after which i jettison them

21:10David
hmm
a suitably worrying thought
mr corr
perhaps
it might be nice, to try?

21:11Brian
no point
just get a new one
like trying to fix a broken glass
no point
glasses are cheap

21:13David
that they are
but
if you keep on breaking glasses
then all you end up with
is a multitude of cheap glasses
instead of some nice crystal
you know
waterford or soemthing

21:13Brian
but you always have something to drink out of
and also you don't get worried that youll break your fancy crystal
i hate drinking out of fancy glasses im not comfortable in case i drop it

21:15David
but if you take care of your cheap glasses, then you will know what it takes to look after an expsensive one
that is great

21:15Brian
no point

21:15David
for entertaining at dinner parties
and showing off to friends

21:15Brian
get a plastic cup

21:15David
:D:D
cheap glasses and plastic cups can only sustain you so long
eventually
you will miss what all your peers have
eg
waterford crystal
and you will be left an epmtpy, broken shell of a man
without nice glasses

21:16Brian
quite the opposite
you will covet the variety
while you're drinking every beverage from the same fancy glass
i'm trying out new wacky designs
drinking from curly straws

21:17David
LOL
no you
are using and breaking
a never ending supply of cheap glasses

21:17Brian
but each one is according to my whim
you're tied to one glass

21:17David
you shall never know
but oh what a glass!
waterford crystal for gods sake!

21:18Brian
i'm all about the inside of the glass
anyhow some glasses are better for different occasions
like maybe you want a coffee. are you gonna drink from your waterford crystal then?

21:20David
HAH i worked hard and payed good money for my wateford crystal! i would drink my own urine out of it if i wanted to!

perspective

To what extent can we control who we are?

Some would say that who we are is completely under our control, and that we (and perhaps some God or equivalent) are the only people who can truly observe it. And that to know another person is impossible.

But if we define a personality as something that can't be observed, then what's the point? If I can't possibly know, then why should I care? What good does it do us to think so hard about ourselves except to inform our actions? We are what we do, what we say, what we present to the world. Nothing more. Anything else is just an exercise we perform that informs our actions. The only value in considering this is to understand how it works, that we might predict actions in the future. Stopping at 'knowing a person' is stupid. Knowing how a person works and thinks should be information to be used (for your gain or theirs or someone else's). 'Who we are' means 'what do people know about us'.

How, then, can we control the message? If who we are is what people see, then we can easily lose control of who we are. Telling lies, we can change who we are, but at the risk of being found out and losing credibility. Misunderstanding, rumour and malice can all change the story and we might not even know it. Left unattended, a false rumour becomes truth, and if that rumour reaches someone before you do, there might be no hope for you. Because like it or not, you are what people think you are, and if you don't like it, you have to do everything in your power to change it.

It does you no good to claim a high moral ground and pretend you don't care what people think. You do, and you should. So next time you want to take a look at yourself, try to do it from someone else's perspective.

Home

I'm at home writing this. My new home. So new, i'm on stolen wifi, since I don't have internet installed yet. I've only been here 8 nights, but it's my home now.

Last night I got back here about 2 in the morning, locked the door, brushed my teeth, drank some water and turned out all them lights. Then climbed the stairs in the dark and felt for the doorhandle to my room. As I touched it I felt at home in a way that I've never felt outside of my parents' house. It didn't matter that there's next to no furniture downstairs or that we don't have a fridge yet. It didn't matter that I've not been here long enough to connect a phone or the internet. It didn't even matter that when prompted that very same day, it took me 5 seconds to remember the address.

It doesn't matter that this place isn't finished yet, because it's mine (at least, in part) and I get to have a say in how it ends up.

Multitasking

As I write this, I'm engaged in a discussion over facebook chat over the merits of blogs, and an internal dialogue over whether to start one. It was a fortnight or so ago that, in a fit of self-esteem, I opened this thing and gave it a title, thinking the rest would take care of itself. It clearly did not, as the status of this as the first post reveals.

At this point (if I should be so bold as to assume that you exist, dear reader), we're both asking ourselves questions. I'm asking myself (and you) why on Earth a person would choose to read a blog by this chump. You're asking yourself a related question, with your fingers hovered over alt-tab, your cursor hovering on Firefox's little orange X on this tab, ready to stop at any second. You and this blog are on a first date, and it's dark enough in the cinema that you could simply walk out and I wouldn't notice.

Indeed, I just took a break from writing to continue the facebook discussion. Not because I want to seem nonchalant; a great deal of my self-worth is tied up in my online persona (SO'S YOURS, DON'T LIE), and if you have any love for me you'll compliment, encourage, hail this blog as a masterpiece and we'll all pretend I didn't just ask you to do it.

But really, I don't care one way or another. For if I do, I'm one of those people who thinks everything thought in their mind is publishable, and that my life is some compelling narrative in a way that distinguishes me from the masses. The friend on the other end of facebook thinks that my awareness of this fact in some way DOES distinguish me, and that my thoughts must be worth reading since I'm aware that they're not; I'm too tired to try to find the hole in that logic, though I'm certain I could find one.

But if there's anything less compelling than my thoughts, it's surely my digressions. The reason I don't mind you not reading this is that everyone's distracted. Right now i'm thinking harder about how funny the coffee cup balanced on my leg is jiggling as I type than I am about the content of the post; this fascination is to blame for the frequency of run-on sentences you'll find here as I'm desperately trying to find ways to make myself type longer, less thoughtful, more complicated strings to typ so that I can see what happens to my cup.

And a distraction pulls me away long enough to drink most of the coffee and ruin the effect, as if punishing me for my bad writing. I've gone completely off track once again, but then, as the title suggests, that's what happens when you're on The Internet. So get used to it, dear reader. Or don't get used to it, and don't be a reader.

Hey did you ever notice how it's hard to end a blog post without seeming like a tool?