Just when I thought I was out ... they pull me back in!

I decided last year to give up video games for 2008. There were a couple of reasons for this: 1) I had played most of the games I wanted to for my original Xbox; 2) As stated below, time is short -- plus, I was attempting to clear space in my schedule for writing fiction, with an eye toward finishing the final draft of The Brooklyn House, the best book I've written; 3) I lusted after an Xbox 360 and the numerous incredible games available for it, but wouldn't spring the $350.00 for a toy; 4) I was and am a little ashamed of the fact that I like this quintessentially adolescent pastime so much -- as a 38 year old man, shouldn't I really be interested in collecting wine or studying the stock market?

Until a week or so ago, the quitting was going swimmingly. I didn't miss video games at all. I even wondered a couple of times if I would ever climb back up into the saddle of that hobby-horse. Then it occurred to me how cool it would be to have a mobile internet device. Although I'd love an iPhone, I decided to research cheaper alternatives. That led me to the Sony PSP, pictured above, and its rival in the marketplace, the Nintendo DS Lite. Both wi-fi capable machines that can slip into your jacket pocket -- and both video game platforms.

Innocently, I decided to do a little research on these intriguing machines, to see which had the better browsing experience. That done, I thought: "Well, if I end up getting one of these, I might as well know which has the better games -- just in case I ever feel like doing a bit of gaming." And before you could say "Miyamoto," my video game interest, which had burned down to a lukewarm bed of coals beneath a downy layer of ash, was a raging conflagration.

Last night I talked with brother Scott, who has two PSPs in the family, and he mentioned that one of his sons (he wasn't sure which) had lost interest in the PSP and might be interested in selling it for $50 or $75.

I said, casually, "Well, sure. Let me know."

These Are the Armies of the Night?

Last Wednesday Barb, Elizabeth, and I took a stroll through the ole neighborhood. After hitting Mocha Monkey and Creston Park we decided to walk down one of the many alleys that run behind the backs of the houses, dividing the blocks. Southeast Portland alleys are awesome, and deserve a book or documentary, or at least a blog post, all their own. The ones closest to our house are often like country roads -- two dirt wheelruts overhung with tree branches.

Anyhow, we came across this graffito, which annoyed me. I snapped the picture with the intention of really laying into the kids (clearly kids -- or even just kid -- don't you think?) who painted this pathetic tag. There's no art to it. The name is a lame cliche. It's hidden in an alley. Oh yeah, I was going to use this blog to rip those so-called 'Rebels' a new one.

I started to rant about these thoughts to Barb and she said she found it (the tag, not the rant) endearing. "It's like something I would have done when I was a kid," she added. Something stupid but harmless, rebellious yet not really. Of course she was right. Kids do this kind of stuff and as long as it remains fairly harmless (e.g. tagging a garage door that opens into an alley) rather than horrifying (e.g. setting fire to an orphanage) we should accept it for what it is: an outward manifestation of the painful growth of adolescence.

Gift Theme

The other night at dinner I told the story about Barb and the picture of the Asian gentleman with the enormous cat (see Barb is Funny, below). Today I get a link to this picture from buddy Snark, with an email saying "I know you love this stuff." Frankly, I do love it. I desperately want an enormous cat. But now I'm fearful that this will become my gift theme.

You know what I'm talking about. Certain people get stuck being identified with a certain totem, and whenever it's time to buy that person a gift, one can always just default to that theme. With Wendy, for instance, it's frogs. Supposedly you can't go wrong getting Wendy a pair of frog socks, or a frog towel, or a frog calendar for her birthday. A friend of my father's, Dave Mann, his theme was Snoopy. Can't think of something he'd really like? Get Mr. Mann a Snoopy coffee mug.

I think gift themes are a lazy way to make easier the difficult task of gifting someone with something meaningful. And to any friends or family who are reading, I do not want to be the person with the enormous-cat gift theme.

Venturing Outside the Neighborhood

A while back I wrote about the fact that despite the enormous size of the internet -- hell, enormous is a ridiculous understatement -- my internet neighborhood was pretty small. I'm a daily internet checker, and make the rounds of CHUD, Cool Tools, BikePortland, my email box, a few comics on Yahoo! news, Tom the Dancing Bug and the New York Times. Last year, when I was still playing videogames, I would've added ActionTrip and Gamespot to that list. Still pretty short.

Recently Cool Tools recommended StumbleUpon to me. If you don't already know, StumbleUpon is a site where you register, pick some interests from a list, then hit the Stumble! button that's been put onto your browser's toolbar. Stumbling lands you on a website that StumbleUpon thinks you'll find interesting based on the interests you picked.

It's fantastic. And a little frightening. Because StumbleUpon is basically a remote control for a TV with infinite channels. You can spend the rest of your life just stabbing that Stumble! button like a boobtube zombie at 3am when you want to go to bed but feel compelled to see if something good's on the next channel... and the next... and the next... . SU also asks you to give a thumbs up or thumbs down vote to each site it sends you to, by which input it refines its knowledge of your preferences.

Want a free online rhyming dictionary? It's out there. Or how about Greenpeace's animated diagram of "The Pacific Trash Vortex". Yep. Did you know there's a website where you upload a random file (music, picture, video, text) and it downloads to you a random file? Now you do.

Since Stumbling around the superfrigginhuge internet, I've bookmarked all sorts of interesting sites. I've laughed quite a few times at funny pictures, videos, or writings. I've even emailed friends links of things I thought they'd enjoy, like this. But it hasn't expanded my neighborhood at all. I haven't revisited any of the sites SU sent me to. I now know that they exist, and maybe someday I'll go back, but I'm pretty comfy in my little neighborhood.

And time is short.

Barb is Funny

I stumbled upon this picture, loved it, and set it as wallpaper on the laptop. The next day Barb sees it and says to me in the most casual tone of voice, "Who's that guy?" Not, "Holy shit, that's one gigantic cat!", but "Who's that guy?"

Holy shit, that's one gigantic cat!

The Virtue of Imperfection

The first time I traveled to Barb's parents' house in Rocky Point, NY, I was stunned and seduced by the apparent perfection of the neighborhood in which they lived. It wasn't a rich neighborhood, just solidly middle class, but everything was perfect. The driveways were all stainless black, sealed every two years. The cars were clean and beautifully maintained, even if not new. The lawns were green, uniform, and mowed. It seemed so much less decrepit than salt-bitten Syracuse, or, God forbid, Binghamton, both exemplars of Rust Belt decay.

The same perfection that wowed me Barb saw as the epitome of the sort of decadent suburban conformity that drives kids (like Barb) to rebel and flee to college or the decaying cities that are so much richer in culture.

Now that I own a house that is somewhat decrepit (it was built in 1925), I struggle with my desire for a perfection that I cannot achieve. I shouldn't even try.

A couple of months ago we got our wood floors refinished. They were in terrible shape, and I knew that there was no way to perfect them -- too many patched areas, scars, and stains. When they were done, I was satisfied that we had made a big improvement in the aesthetics and preservation of our old house. As soon as the contractor told us we could, we started to move back in. The first big piece of furniture to go into the living room was the couch, which has a hide-a-bed and therefore weighs about the same as a Harley-Davidson Fatboy. Barb was eight months pregnant. We couldn't carry it to its place, so we put it on its steel casters and rolled it across the floor. Sure enough each caster cut a furrow in our floor's new finish.

I wanted to curse and rend my clothes and tear my hair out. I didn't because I knew that in a week I wouldn't care so much and two months down the road I wouldn't care at all. I was wrong; a couple of months later I'm not indifferent to the furrows in our floor -- I like them. Like a scar on your flesh, or laugh lines in your face, imperfections tell stories and establish landmarks to guide your memory on its journey into the past. Because of the flaw in our floor I will live with an everpresent reminder of a particular week in our life, one of the last weeks before Barb and I became parents.