Caroline says: Are you feeling better?
Ryan says: A little bit. Slept from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. yesterday.
Ryan says: With occasional wake-ups to cough up a whopper of a loogie.
Caroline says: Sleep halmps.
Ryan says: Still coughing up a good quantity of lung butter.
Caroline says: That's pretty disgusting.
Ryan says: Hey, I agree.
Caroline says: Then we'll agree to agree.
Ryan says: I've been walking down the hall and spitting into a neighbor's trash can.
Caroline says: You're like the opposite of Mr. Rogers.
Ryan says: You mean. . . I'm alive?
Caroline says: I mean ... you're a bad neighbor.
Ryan says: And alive.
I mentioned awhile back that I purchased the PC game Medal of Honor: Airborne, but because my existing computer at the time was just a pubic hair (in computing terms) shy of being able to run the game, it sat forlorn on my desk, accumulating dust.
Well, now I have my new computer, which is more than capable of running all the latest PC games, at least until next year or so, so I've been playing Airborne pretty regularly for the last eight evenings.
Airborne takes the Medal of Honor WWII first person shooter genre into the skies, at least briefly. As an Airborne soldier with the deliciously American name "Boyd Travers," you're a young buck who is not afraid to leap from an aircraft into the unknown turmoil below.
The richness of detail, combined with the additional component of jumping out of an airplane, looking down at it all, must have been a crazy difficult 3-D animation engine trick to pull off, but the good folks at Electronic Arts accomplished it in fine form, althought they could only manage about five or six missions for the entire game. Which. . .
There was a time when I had the patience for meticulous first person shooters that required me to creep along, ducking behind walls and crates that are curiously impervious to rounds fired from a Tiger tank. But, after two leaps from an airplane and getting fragged within seconds by unseen Nazis, I was out on the Internet, looking for cheat codes. Specifically, I was looking for the "God" cheat, which basically makes you invulnerable. Finding the cheat of my choice, I set about tweaking the game file so I could wipe Nazis out at will without fear of any consequences. There's something deeply wonderful about watching a Tiger tank take a shot at you, and you can watch the shell approach and everything and basically just stand there, like Superman. You'd think that would demoralize the enemy somewhat, but they just keep on coming in waves.
Oh, and the game developers have apparently been working tirelessly on the AI algorithms that dictate enemy movement, because these Nazis have MOVES. They duck, they run, they jump, they dodge; they basically don't stand still for very long. The only thing they don't do, as far as I can tell, is the MC Hammer dance while taunting "Can't Touch This." The best solution to this problem, I've found, since I can't die, is to rush them with a shotgun until you can see the whites of their pixilated eyes, and then pump a round into them. Very effective.
As I said, there aren't many missions--although I'm sure an expansion pack is due out any month now--but if you were to play by the rules, each mission would no doubt take ages to complete; in God mode, you can pretty much mow your way through the missions within 45 minutes, max.
I play it primarily to take in the whole "WOW" experience of the graphics, which are just dripping with detail and realism. As with the last Medal of Honor games, this one could use a little more blood and gore, as twisted as that may sound, but somehow seeing someone getting launched 20 feet after a stick grenade goes off between their legs, and they don't even lose a limb, is just disappointing somehow.
Even before I start this post, I should note, for the record, I have nothing against pictures. In fact, I like pictures. I even dabble in a little amateur photography. In other words: YAY, PICTURES!
That said, I HATE having my picture taken. I mean, I can't even begin to describe how much I hate having my picture taken. It's the whole process, really. The preparation. The staging. The "okay, smile" directive, which makes it practically impossible to generate an actual, enthusiatic mouth curve in the upper direction.
Think about it. There's no other time in your life when you're expected to smile on demand other than when you're having your picture taken. Generally, smiles just happen. If you're on a roller coaster, chances are good you'll smile. If you're watching a comedian who isn't Jerry Seinfeld, you'll probably smile. If somebody trips and falls down in front of you into a pile of dog feces, you may not smile at the time, but you'll probably smile--maybe even laugh--when you think about it later. The point is, smiling comes pretty easy, when it's not expected--nay, required--of you.
So, I smile regularly. Daily, in fact, unbidden, about a myriad of things, both large and small. But aim a camera at me and tell me to smile, and I'll glare daggers into your soul. How dare someone take an act as enjoyable and natural as smiling, and have the audacity to turn it into a chore.
You see, there's nothing fun about having your picture taken, at least in my experience. First off, there's all the prep work involved in putting your best possible face forward, and then all the positioning of both yourself and anybody else who is going to be in the picture--family photos being the worst. Staged photographs are, when it comes right down to it, momentarily choreographed lies. Nobody really looks like they do in pictures. No family lines up by height, or age, or whatever and smiles blankly, unless, and ONLY UNLESS, they're having their picture taken.
I routinely drive my mother crazy, because I simply refuse to flash my teeth in a brightly manner on demand when she aims a camera my way. She always insists it's not a big deal to smile, but really it IS. There's nothing more torturous than to smile when there's no reason. It's like being told your dog got hit by a car, and then being instructed to laugh.
Onto this pile of resentment towards picture smiling is tossed the countless ways photographers try to extract a smile when a smile is not forthcoming. There's the standard issue "Say cheese!" which lost its effectiveness when I was about seven; or they'll mime a smile or tell a particularly corny joke, which generally just serves to sour my mood rather than enhance and en-smile-ify me. My mother, having endured years of my stubborn anti-smile picture crusade, has resorted to such defeatist smile entreaties as "just this once, for me" and "it won't kill you to smile."
Which, by the way, I have to say, no, it probably won't kill me to smile, but now she went and threw that mere possibility onto the table. What if it DID kill me to smile? Why in the world would I want to take such a life-ending chance just so my mother could get a picture of the whole family together in Las Vegas in 2007? Mom would get her film developed, and there would be that one picture of all of us together, for the last time, with me smiling and the distinct look of the life leaving my eyes forever. Gee, thanks Mom. Way to go.
To further darken my mood and deepen my disdain for picture smiling, the world went and invented digital cameras, which mothers around the world both love dearly and have no idea whatsoever how to operate. Nothing wipes a smile from a mouth faster than to stand, posing, for minutes on end, while a mother stares blankly at a digital camera screen, cluelessly pushing at buttons and saying things like: "did the flash work?" or "wait, that one was blurry," or "is it this button, or this button?" or "Ryan wasn't smiling in that one." Yes, digital cameras: no longer do you have to deal with the expense of film, only the incompetence of the operators.
Now, after writing all this, I'm in such a foul mood, I probably won't be able to smile for weeks. Unless I see a guy fall face first into dog feces; that always brightens my day.
Just so you know, I watched the latest episode of "The Simpsons" last night, and even though the episode had all the humor of a tree stump, it still has to hurt the old guard at newspapers to have Nelson Muntz point at a newspaper representative and say "HA HA! Your medium is dying!"
Nelson Muntz can be so cruel. Accurate, but cruel.
