the life and times of endenizen » Musings

“Enjoy your flight to Los Angeles!” Such friendliness is never expected given so many horror stories of security screening personnel and their strict requirements for entry.

Thou shalt restrict all containers of liquids to those which singularly hold no more than 3 ounces and together, within their respective containers, comprise no more than the volume of one quart-sized clear plastic ziplock bag. Your skin may be dry, but terrorists can make bombs out of your 20oz bottle of lotion so you’ll have to give it up for the greater good.

I saw a bottle of Bacardi discarded under the x-ray scanner. The cure for fear is removing that which cures fear for the fear that it might be something else. How does the old adage go? Alcohol is the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. Given that, I hope someone gets to enjoy that bottle. Even if it didn’t solve any problems for the person that bought it, who’s now on the plane, and down $30. So much for bringing a security blanket.

Through the security checkpoint and on to the G/H wing I’ve come to know so well. A new wall-sized touch-screen interface greets me as G splits to the left and H to the right. A man stands close to it, as if he weren’t sure whether it was serious about the message “Touch me for weather.” Many people go their whole lives without encountering such a request. Mine was H-8 so I continued to the right and past an ATM. I should get money, I thought. Only by then I was halfway to my gate. I knew I had 2 dollars in my pocket so I veered to the Starbucks on the left side of the hall. Only 4 people in line? At a Starbucks? I can’t resist. I waited it out and got a “Tall” coffee, which, opposed to the tallest size, Venti, is actually a word, though not one I would use to describe the smallest of coffees. Oh well, people manage to adapt to their surroundings. And Starbucks manages to surround people very well. After that, I got hungry. Starbucks made me hungry.. but $2 meant I could only afford 1 of the cheapest thing on the menu. I left with my coffee, now empty of money (a 25 cent tip for a coffee isn’t too much, is it?) and decided to head back to the ATM to fill up my pockets. Then I headed to the food court, with a photo album of my three uncle Jacksons (they’re triplets). I noticed the regular food offerings, and the regular crowd in front of the McDonalds stand. The pizza joint was barren. By the time I got to the other side I had resolved to walk back to the Starbucks and get a muffin. What’s this? Lo and behold, directly in front of me was another Starbucks. Apparantely someone else had the same idea. This Starbucks was twice the size of the previous one, with a line on either side. And both lines had twice as many customers. Must be a better location. Are the two establishments competing? Is it appropriate to tell these customers about the other Starbucks just around the corner? I decided against it and got a blueberry muffin. I didn’t feel bad about spilling crumbs on the floor outside my gate.

For the longest time, you were the most distant planet in our solar system. Well, I guess sometimes you and Neptune sometimes switched places, but you’ll always be furthest from my heart. Oh… hmm, that sounded bad. What I mean is, you’ll always be a great ending to our solar system. Er, except that you aren’t a planet anymore. Don’t worry, I’m sure kids will still learn about you for years to come. Maybe you’ll even be *more* popular now that you’ve been demoted. You could make an incredible comeback like Y did after being kicked out of the vowels club. Y isn’t just one of those consonants… it’s a “sometimes vowel” and I think that means a lot more. Instead of being remembered as “and Pluto” you’ll now be “and sometimes Pluto” but that’s almost the same thing. I’ll make up a new cheer:

Ready… set…

MERCURY! VENUS! EARTH! MARS!

JUPITER! SATURN! URANUS! NEPTUNE!

and sometimes PLUTO! YAY!!

That’s got a nice ring to it. Saturn has some nice rings too. Maybe if you grew some rings like Saturn they’d let you back in. I can’t be sure, they might also bring up the truth that you’re tiny, your orbit is strange, and you’re waaaaay out there.

Some people poke fun at your new classification but I don’t have any problem with dwarves. I think sometimes they’re even more fun than… er, regular-sized things. Some have falsely called you a “meteor” but that would mean you’re entering our atmosphere and that wouldn’t be very nice. After all, you’re not going to ever become a planet again if you just destroy the earth. If you’ve got issues, just wait 220 years and then make fun of Neptune as it becomes the loser. I’ll even give you some help:

Now look who’s furthest from the sun!

Your rings suck!

Your moon is going the wrong way!

You’re blue!

All in all, I’m bummed that they took away your manhood… er, planethood. Bummed like when I ran out of interesting things to write in my blog. In other words, meh.

Side note: I’m not making this up. Pluto was demoted from full planet status to a mere dwarf planet. You can read about this, well everywhere, but here’s 8 places to get you started (and to reinforce the fact that there can be only 8 *real* planets): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. In terms of the Neptune insults, 1. Neptune is further out than Pluto for 20 years out of every 249 (which next occurs in September of 2226). 2. Neptune’s rings are faint, but may be growing! (especially after its moon, Titan, smashes into the side of it). 3. Neptune’s moon, Titan, is the only moon in the solar system which orbits its planet opposite the direction of the planet’s spin (which means you actually get younger if you live on it). 4. Neptune is, in fact, blue (it’s all the methane in the atmosphere). Now you know!

Progress Quest is a game that fulfills all of the requirements of an MMORPG. And, simultaneously, none of them. The game is, in fact, a zero-player game. The character creation process is the last similarity this game has to any other. Once that’s done, you’re done. But really, you’ve just started. You’ll spend the next 12 hours crawling through a seemingly endless dungeon with gamers all over the world. Just kidding, you don’t actually *do* anything in the game. The computer does it all for you.

The game has 4 different servers you can join and a leaderboard to see how you match up to fellow adventurers. Of course, these matchups are boiled down to the raw statistics of your character, and they don’t say much about your true skills in the game. You can join a guild or two if you prefer. Guilds will then get better status on the server and will in turn bestow on you their magical powers and bragging rights. Guilds are divided into 4 categories, Factions, Clans, Bands, and Trivialities. The top Clan of Oobag right now is the “Rectilinear Society” who’s motto is “A right angle is the right angle.” Such creative physical appearances as “square heads” could never be embraced in a regular MMORPG because everyone looks exactly the same. When the game is taken away, however, we’re back to using our imaginations.

Imagine any task you must perform, say, writing a paper for class. Take the end goal out and you’re left with a lot of useless typing. Now take any MMORPG and remove the end goal (if you can even figure out what that is) and you’re left with a lot of dungeon-crawling. This is where Progress Quest comes in. It takes the boring dungeon-crawling out of the game and leaves you with pure statistics to salivate over as you await Level 15 when you finally get the spell “Cone of Annoyance IV.” Of course, this isn’t the end of the game… oh no, you keep going! Eventually you’ll hit another level and get more spells and be able to use them on bigger monsters which give you more valuable loot which you can sell for better weapons and armor! And that’s really the point of the game, the weapons and armor. But that’s not really a point then, is it? There will always be more loot to get, better weapons, more money, more levels. By definition, there can be no point to a game that never ends. Besides that, it wouldn’t be very fun if you had to stop playing now would it? What have you accomplished when all that progress just …disappears?

I’m still not sure what to be for halloween. This won’t be such a problem if I go through with my current plans (none). I have the feeling, though, that somehow, I’ll get sucked into going to a halloween party and I’ll really want a good costume. Or any costume. Or even a good idea for a costume and some really great excuse why I couldn’t pull it off.

I was gonna go as Jermaine Dye but someone caught me while I was trying to steal his jersey.

I was gonna go as Eeyore but they didn’t have a costume my size.

I was gonna go as a tootsie roll but again, nothing my size…

Too bad my excuses aren’t even that great… But seriously people, make some costumes for adults. And make more than adult costumes for adults.

I want to be a frickin tootsie roll for halloween but I can’t cause the only size they have is TINY!

In other news: I’m not so excited about the White Sox winning the World Series but… the Astros losing? That’s cool. And I guess I don’t mind one Chicago team doing well every once in a while. The Cubs are still my home team though. By the way, I don’t like baseball.

I do like Star Trek though. I’m not a trekkie by any measure but I thoroughly enjoy the tales that Gene Roddenberry brings to the TV. I’ve been renting the DVDs with my Blockbuster membership online. I started this summer and I’m up to season 4 (The Next Generation) now. They just fought the Borg.. and WON! I’m so excited, cause the season just started… so … I mean I wouldn’t want them to die and just have one episode. That’d be a pretty lame season.

In conclusion, I think that the number one thing I would do if I could change anything would be, world peace.