Auto strike. Ahahaha.

Andheri Station at 8:30 a.m., peak rush hour.

Believe it or not.

An auto rickshaw strike today in Mumbai and Life Is Beautiful. The streets are empty, traffic jams are a thing of the distant past like a bad dream, it takes a grand total of seven minutes to reach the station... Why can't life be usually like this? When I return to home tonight I have every expectation that the streets will be equally clear.

Hopefully, this should make people realize they don't really need so many autos. And the suburbs will be as pleasant as Town, henceforth and forever... I wish.

men are dogs

and now Sandoz has unequivocally endorsed that sentiment. Check out the packaging for the men's and women's calcium tablet jars -

What can I say but Woof! Woof!

product life cycle like never before

Today, dear pagecount contributor, let me tell you about my washing machine.

My washing machine suffers from habitual and copious incontinence.

My washing machine groans like a ghoul at odd intervals.

My washing machine cannot take water on it's own, and needs to be put on a separate hose like an IV drip for every wash.

Because of this, it needs constant watching and supervision to make sure the pipe doesn't fall out and sprays water all over my comp. My washing machine, perversely, will start it's wash cycle exactly when I step out of the room in nicotine-starved frustration, with a flatulent rumble followed by a merry splish-splash, causing me to twitch violently at a crucial juncture while leaning sideways over the gas (since the matches are soaked) and singeing my eyebrows.

My washing machine needs a special support stand in order to be moved around, to be able to reach the bathroom drain.

My washing machine displays all the vibrancy of an epileptic seizure in the spin cycle. A vibrancy that knocks it off its castors and upon my unsuspecting feet, whilst partly-spin-dried clothing flies about in wild abandon.

My washing machine is an old, old man, on it's deathbed.

Had it owned large property, or even a hall-kitchen south of Boriviali, I would have been standing over it with will and pen and large, comforting smile.

"If you hate your washing machine so much," asked HR, who was just recently introduced to the joys of new-ownerhood of a brand-new IFB, "why don't you just buy a new one?"

A new machine, it is true, would be young, vibrant, and eager to please with a hint of smug superiority, like an MBA with 1 year's work ex. It will, like Sharman Joshi in Metro, take away all my troubles and resolve them. It may not get me laid as well in the bargain, but with the kind of tech Siemens is putting in it's machines these days, you never know.

But the truth is - I like this one. It's more paisa-vasool entertainment than a Mithun-da film festival. Washing day is lookied forward to with dread, trepidation, and a fluttering int he stomach weeks in advance. Jeans are re-re-re-used until they're insufferably obscenely filthy, and therefore last decades. Office shirts are guarded like Kohinoor diamonds to avoid the slightest speck of dirt. Underclothing contributes to many new species for alien scientists to discover and theorize about the evolution and origin thereof, billions of years from now, by creating independent, individual biospheres. Curtains become bulletproof with mold, mildew and dust, and that too at no extra cost. Enough electricity is saved to power rural Maharashtra for at least a week, which is why I was able to watch DishTV at the end of the Lohagadh trek while savoring a nice hot chai and ciggie out of the pouring rain.

So, such is my life and that of my washing machine.

Even talking about it makes me feel clean.

Is it not the most amazing machine you've seen?

It's lean, mean, and even ecologically green.

Other machines, they look obscene,

When compared. Wah. What a scene!

looking back

If another myself could meet me today, he would be fairly sandbagged as well.

Life has been... interesting. Most of all, in the way things have changed. I used to think, sometimes, a while back, what I would be growing into, what I would become.

The truth, as they say, is usually stranger than fiction. The 18-yr-old Ashish had some ideas about what he was going to grow up into... and not a few dark suspicions. On the whole, I think it's the suspicions that have been vindicated. But in a good way. I've pretty much gone ahead and done everything I wanted to, and got everything I'd hoped for. Then.

In the long look back - it's been almost frighteningly good. Even the bad bits have the golden glow of nostalgia around them now. Wonder if it's a case of selective perception, or actually paying attention to the stuff that mattered that's pulled it off, putting me in a life that, to say the least, rocks.

I am the...

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

discovering archetypes

Everything... begins.
This... began over an inconsideration. On a shared 30-Kbps wireless line, bandwidth is precious; and as with any limited resource, there need to be rules to manage them, to prevent the whole system from collapsing. And when the rules are broken, there are... reactions. Solutions.
.

Gaiman was unknown to me except as a co-author, the other half of a superlative fantasy-spinner. From that one book followed another, and another... and the whole exploration may have ended there, but for... a few images. Images that prompted me to risk one, just one more experiment.

It gave me a name.

And one night, when the rulebreaker was away, a parallel method was found. An alternative. A chastisement.

A revenge.

The name was, then, inconsequential. It just floated along, and was pinned to the board as an as-good-as-any candidate.

The torrent completed its download.

And on a quiet tuesday evening, I discovered The Sandman.

.
I'm only 3 stories down, and already I can feel myself being drawn into that universe. Pictures move, faint sounds, scents. Depth.

Time.

Impact.
And most of all, it's so familiar. Like a racial memory, an archetype.

The Matrix. Morpheus. Neo. The black. Everything you see is a dream, and The One is the awakener.

Stephen King's Randall Flagg. The world that had moved on. The Tower. Alternate realities.

MIB. There are hidden truths, hidden stories all around you. Nothing is what it seems to be.

Illuminati.

The Man.

John Constantine.

The face in the crowd, for just a second, that looks right at you. Eyes meet. The shock, the subconscious recognition. Then it's gone, and no matter how hard you search, you can never find it again.
Walking through them all, is the same image.
.

The Endless.

The Man In Black.

How to build a Generation Starship

Just read Mayflower II recently. it's probably been the best ever description of how a generation starship would actually work in practice, just like the Odyssey series were the best ever in the hibernation-tech travel. And if you think about it, it does make sense - unless you have a habitat the size of a continent, civilization will stagnate, degrade. You can't think in terms of weeks, months, years, even decades; can we plan centuries?

In that small a space, you have to think of not technical, not psychological, not even social issues. You have to think in civilizations. I see a whole new brand of ship's doctor coming up.

Hm - I guess I'm also beginning to see the reason for the holodeck and Deanna Troi, beyond the obvious eyecandy.

Conversely, if we have continent-sized habitats capable of interstellar travel, it makes the point kinda moot. Where do you go, when all you want is already here? Nobody would ever leave; any planet would always come a poor second to the ship itself. You could have roaming generation ships that travel to seed, and move on. Factoring in wear-and-tear issue resolution, of course. Or you could have seeders whose only purpose is to reach the next destination only to rebuild their ship, leave behind descendants, and move on.

Niven's Ringworld is a generation starship taken to the other extreme - a habitat that outclasses any source or destination at an exponential level.

Which brings us back to the Civilization Planner. We would either need supremely long-lived human beings, or Pak. Or we would need automated systems and frozen chromosomes, and independent failsafes of frozen repairmen when things went wrong.

That's possible. Shit, that's possible. We can start reaching the stars the day we have a reliable freezing tech.

Here's another alternate. One mother system that runs the ship. Multiple gene banks. Multiple equipment garages. And multiple independent modules whose only function would be to synthesize and grow trained repair personnel from the gene banks purely when the rest of the systems collapsed so catastrophically that they went out of the parameters of the autosystems. Sure, it'll take years to get the workers - but that's nothing in a journey span of millenia.

Interesting to think of what they would do afterwards, though.

Hmmm...

Gaming - the next level

Most probably a hoax, but lookit the completely awesome concept. Reality Gaming.

Game puts player into trance, then evil mastermind game coordinator puts player into game. A zombie FPS is replicated in real life in a warehouse, and knocked-out players are put in. Watch them wake up, the completely disbelieving 'this-is-not-happening' look slide into near-madness when the zombies start making their appearance.

Also says a lot of how people react. It took him just a few seconds to start shooting at the people. I can't even say he's adapting to the situation because he's not taking the classic approach to zombies as popularized in hundreds of movies - i.e., zombies can be disposed of by removing the head or destroying the brain - but not a single headshot do we see. He's just opening full-on fire at anyone and everyone. Including the game coordinator, despite his obviously non-zombie look.

Maybe there is some truth in the studies that correlate violent behaviour to games; sadly, one more thing that come through all to clearly is how educational content - removing the head or destroying the brain - tends to be completely discarded in stressful situations.

gamers: catchin 'em young!

The kid on the left must be, what, three? Four, max? His head is at the same level as his controller... and he still drives better than me, with a twenty-five year head start.

The boy has a future, mmm?

Not to miss the sibling rivalry at play; the elder one on the right hogs the Xbox, while the younger is fobbed off with a PS2.

Going Postal 2.0

Can't remember the last game that made me fall off my chair laughing, ROTFL. After the failure of Quake Wars, Carmagaeddon, and Manhattan Project, I was fairly skeptical of even getting this to work... hah! Worked first time, as a pleasant surprise. No codes to hunt, cracks to download.
[Current score: Colaba Pavement 3, uTorrent 2.]
The graphics are a bit old; I remember playing the original 2D Postal back in '95, so this can't have been too far ahead, though the responsiveness of the Unreal engine is awesome. But it's a laugh riot because of the twisted, fast, and completely bonkers sense of humour that it overflows with.
'Save a Tree, Burn a Book.'
'Did you place an offering in the Donation Box? Then you are Forgiven.'
The ability to stick your shotgun up a cat's bum to use as a makeshift silencer.
The only, and repeat, ONLY, game in history I have played where I can pee on people.
The Church or Our Lady of Infinite Avarice, disgorging boomstick-toting priests to take on Osama clones.
Me getting captured by hillibillies and waking up... in the Gimp's leather suit, in his trunk.

The physics engine isn't up to HL2 standards, sadly; if you kick a corpse, there's a good chance it'll stick halfway in a wall, straight-edged and angular, until kicked again, and the 'rag-doll' effects are bit too ragdoll. Bloodsmears too smeary. Textures crude.

But is still so totally awesomely rocks. When will they build the next version with the HL2 engine?! :)

Though on a serious note, it kind of gets you thinking. This game is violent, disgusting, bloody, and disrespectful. And it's precisely for those reasons that it'll be loved by it's target audience. Even the protestors, most of the time, object on the basis of an idea, or a principle. A stereotype. Games are bad, they make you mad.

Does the human psyche actively seek out violence? Since the Deterrence principle effectively stopped war for the First-world nations, and now all nuclear nations, crime rates have been rising. I don't know if it's been directly since then, but it's close enough. Is crime - and all other forms of both real and virtual violence - a direct expression of the need to fight, and frustration at not being able to?

In primitive cultures, kids start fighting by fifteen. In more advanced societies, it's later, but the promise - and conditioning - begins from much earlier. It's only now, in the developed countries, that kids grow up knowing that, in a legitimate, socially acceptable way, fighting - violence - is not permitted, and never will be. Does that block off some outlet, some safety valve?

Notice how the US homicides graph spikes with the end of the last major war the US was involved in? I guess we'll know for sure when VR tech advances to the point that virtual violence is indistinguishable from the real. If actual crime rates drop - I'm vindicated.

In the meantime, I continue to go on a murderous citizen-hunting spree... and it's only Wednesday.

Roses are red, but V-Day is blue.

Please excuse general ranting post. But that's what I'm blogging for anyway, so if you don't like, take hike.

Feb 3rd: Order placed at Rediff.com. Delivery to be done on 14th.
Feb 14th:Not delivered.
Feb 18th:
From:Ashish Tewari
Date: Monday, February 18, 2008 03:26 PM
To: customersupport@rediff.co.in
Subject: Complaint: Order No: 4384440
Hi, I wanted to bring to your attention the following order, which was placed on Date:2008-02-07 for delivery on Valentine's Day. As of today (18th), it is still showing as pending. Should I have specified that I meant Valentine's Day 2008 and not 2009?
Order No: 4384440 Order Status :Approved
What's the next step from here? Has the cost been charged to me?
Feb 19th:
From: Support
To: Ashish Tewari Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 9:42 PM
Subject: [Possible SPAM] RE:'Rediff=008-094-395' Complaint: Order No: 4384440
Dear Ashish,
Greetings from Rediff.com With reference to your mail, we would like to inform you that the item ordered against the Order No : 4384440 , has been delivered to the delivery address.
Assure you of prompt and courteous response on all your visits to Rediff.com
Warm Regards,
PG
Customer Service
Rediff. Com
P.S: Please do not change the subject line for future correspondence .

Dear ABVP / Shiv Sainiks / Miscellaneous Lumpen Elements: Please update your calendars. Valentine's Day will henceforth be celebrated on the 19th of February, courtesy Rediff.com.

From: Ashish Tewari
Date: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 11:37 AM
To: Support (customersupport@rediff.co.in)
Subject: Re: [Possible SPAM] RE: Complaint: Order No: 4384440
Delivery on the 19th for a festival on the 14th, even after the order has been booked 10 days in advance of the festival, is not counted as fulfilling customer satisfaction. You need to add a disclaimer that 'Product may be delivered up to 5 days after scheduled date' to avoid false representation and consumer court issues. I am very, very disappointed with the quality of Rediff's service. The recipient needs to receive this ON the day it is supposed to be delivered. What's the point of delivering it 5 days late? Are you suggesting that I need to celebrate Valentine's day, or a birthday, or any other occasion on the day they happen, or as per Rediff's convenience? I'm interested in hearing what is even the remotest justification you have for delivery of a Valentine's Day gift on the 19th. I may as well not have placed the order with Rediff. I have to put up with the consequences of not gifting on the 14th, then seeing my money go down the drain, and then be told that the delivery has been done late, without any apology or reason. Why should I gift flowers on the 19th of February? I already look bad for not giving on the 14th. Now an incompetent vendor screws it up even more by then doing a delivery a week later!

In fact, let me correct my above point. I am not interested in finding out why Rediff chooses to celebrate Valentine's Day on the 19th. As far as I am concerned, the order of a Valentine's Day Flowers was not executed. I did not order 'Flowers to be delivered on the 19th of February for no reason'. I am therefore assuming that my order placed has not been executed, and I want my order cancelled and my money back.

Grrrr.

From: Support
To: Ashish Tewari
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 10:12 PM
Subject: [Possible SPAM] RE:'Rediff=008-094-395' Complaint: Order No: 4384440
Dear Ashish,
Greetings from Rediff.com
We have received your mail and understand every reason for you being upset. We have made every attempts to deliver products on the intended date, however the same must have happened due to oversight by our enabling partners at the time of delivery.
They have attempted, but enabling partner screwed up. Interesting. Take the credit but pass the buck, in the same sentence!
We would not be able to meet the sentiment that you had intended to send along with a timely gift.
(at least, until we finish work on the rediff iTimeMachine 1.0 beta, I assume)
We truly understand the sentiments involved in your gifting. We request you to kindly bear with us this time, we are taking adequate measure to prevent any recurrence.
(by ensuring you don't have recurring customers?)
We once again sincerely regret the delay and inconvenience caused to you. We assure you courteous, prompt service on all your visits to www.rediff.com.
Warm Regards,
PG
Customer Service
Rediff. Com

And how was your V-day?

just when you thought it couldn't get any better....

Guess who turns out to be in the wrecking business!
What's next? The Delilah franchise of hair salons?
I spoke to soon. They already are.
http://www.delilah-salon.com/

Now your chaetophobia can trigger your trichotillomania. Enjoy.

Back to the womb

fuzzy

sleep-deprived lethargy

late nights

cacophonous mornings passing in a semi-dozing drift

office ac off

warm

moist air

like being back in the womb

or

would be if I were a set up quintuplets

with in-vitrio ipods

Mumbai for Maharashtrians?

Jokes apart - I'm a northie who landed up in Bombay with 5k and nothing else, not so long ago. I got a job and a pg. That grew into a career, a flat, and a relationship. My bosses, co-workers, and friends have been non-Maharashtrians and Maharashtrians alike.

I've never had reason to complain, I haven't been discriminated against, and frankly, I've had an awesome time here. But... this city is drowning in people. Local populace from the hinterland and beyond, it's bursting at the seams with too many dreams, and not enough place for them all.

I'm an immigrant.

But I WILL oppose immigration when I hang out of trains. Pay exorbiant rents. Stand in serpentine queues. Sit in traffic jams. It doesn't matter who comes here. It matters a lot that he comes at all.

Sooner or later, it's all going to come down to economical natural selection. New companies will find it too expensive to set up shop in the city, so they'll come near it - near enough to use the workforce, but far enough to be affordable. The city will grow. And grow. And grow. Already it makes a lot of sense to change your residence according to where you work. Tomorrow, companies will factor in easily-commutable residential slots as part of the package for employees. And facilities and amenities. And the city will be a collection of _____ (insert company name here)-Nagars. Campuses, in the truest sense of the word.

We can't fight it. We can just try and make it easier, without the pressure cooker situations.

boo hoo

Quake Wars won't run 'coz my AGP is underpowered. I can't upgrade my AGP card because my motherboard isn't compatible. I can't change my motherboard 'coz I then need to change my processor as well. I can't buy a 22-inch flatscreen monitor and a 7.1 GigaWorks system 'coz I don't have any games that'll justify it, and I can't buy those games 'coz my AGP won't run them.

For want of a kingdom, the nail was lost.

...and Bioshock refuses to install without an internet connection. For some reason, Tata Indicom broadband doesn't fall into Bioshock's definition of 'internet'.

can I bang my forehead on my pitiful 15-inch CRT now?

A moving story... moved!

For all my loyal fans and faithful supporters who have been avidly following my trials and tribulations at the hands of the financial capital's treatment of it's denizens vis-a-vis translocation of residences, let me serve up to you, gently warmed, a multi-course repast of the aftermath of the move - where we are now.

Starters:

The PC Room

One room has been converted into a combination of gaming centre, server room, laundromat and travel office.

A cupboard threatens to explode from the accumalated pressure of souvenirs, trekking equipment, and half a dozen knapsacks and sleeping bags so tightly rolled up they threaten to achieve critical mass. Especially R's alpine sleeping bag, the best way to picture which is to imagine a regular Kurl-on mattress somehow squeezed into a gas cylinder. I can hear it groaning and vibrating under stress, sometimes.

The rest of the cupboard looks like Lamington road, where my entire paraphenelia of electronic spares and discards, now completely indistinguishable from each other, languish in wait of the Great TurboListing Day, when they shall go up for auction on ebay.

Next to which is a desk which is not actually alive, though you may be fooled by the way it hums, moves, chuckles and chirrups to itself, is warm to the the touch and exhales gustily on your knees when you sit down; that's what comes of having a CPU, two heatsinks, and a subwoofer in one confined space. There's a small hole in the desk which the original owner had intended for a genteel 2-3 cables for monitor, speakers, etc. It looks like a Lovecraftian revenant now, with over 20 cables of assorted thicknesses, colors and tensions coiling out of it. 2 monitor, 3 ext. HDD, 1 USB hub, 1 joystick, 6 speaker, 1 mouse, 1 gamepad receptor, 1 webcam, 2 router, 1 cam cable, 1 cardreader coming out; 1 network and 1 power going in; and don't even think of the interior, where there's also 2 extension boards. It gives local network engineers heart attacks. I counted yesterday - 17 LEDs operate at any point of time. It's a bloody spaceshuttle flight deck.

And while you sit down, behind you the washing machine, if on, provides a pleasant growling, thumping, drumming background score, with the occasional merry splish-splash of overflow when the pipe falls off or the exhaust hose leaks.

At nights, it's like being in a high-tech womb.

aimlessness...

miss trekking. used to give me such a calm, fresh new perspective... too many things happening now, too much to do

Runaway 2

Basically a glorified puzzle-solving game where you need to discover the sequence of using items found, talking to people, and picking up on past clues. What I really liked about this was the intensely rich, immersive experience - from music, to background sound, to conversations, accents, situations, and the extremely... fantasy-type feel. A sense of somewhere, somehow, this can happen, and a sense of being part of a bygone age and place that was fun, adventurous, and relaxed. In fact, everything that a Catalina stands for. Every time that flying boat has entered my life, these are the feelings it brings - from Duck Tales, to Commando comics, to Indiana Jones, to Tales of the Gold Monkey. Wonder if there's a message in the pattern?
At a stage right now where the story's becoming... interesting. I've outsmarted a drunk monkey, a dyslexic marine, befriended a nymphomaniacal waitress, impersonated a top secret government official, brought a cockatoo back from the dead, desecrated a witch doctor's grave, stolen a toy from a child, helped a Hawaiian kahuna rediscover his roots, taught an australian surfer to surf without waves, taught a genius idiot-savant to speak again and learn dentistry, unlocked an alien portal, and am currently avoiding a psychotic killer and a megalomaniacal renegade colonel.
The characters are awesome. Kordsmeier has references to god knows how many megalomaniacal colonels from Hollywood lore. Platoon's Sgt. Elias Grodin, Forrest Gump's Lt. Dan, Apocalypse Now's Col. Kurtz and Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore. A dead Indiana Jones makes an appearance, as does an aged Baloo in a human avatar. Ehrich von Daniken is profoundly present, and a tropical Area 51. This is where it scores over Myst - Myst was too abstract, too alien, too unfamiliar. Here, you can use what you know from modern-day legends. It's an awesomely entertaining experience, and you do need to use your brains.
Let's see what happens next...

the future is now

This. Is. So Cool!

Microtechnologies as come up with an anti-theft system that talks to your mobile. That means anywhere you are, you know what's happening to your car, where it is (they have a web-interface tracker), two-way voice, GPRS and SMS-based tracking, remote arm / disarm, lockdown, and shutdown features.

So the next time someone steals your car, you can lock him in and shut down the whole works, then go over to where he is, and call the cops. And tell him what a naughty boy he's been while he waits for the cops.

Waiting for the next-gen version, which will have internal / external cam, remote control, and a large boxing glove on a spring.

gaming

Why do I game?

It eats away time, money, sleep, healthy eating, good posture, fills the head with nightmares and daydreams, opens your computer to infection risks, overwhelms my HD, and blows my bank balance in associated costs - AGPs, peripherals, networking...

yet I game. Compulsively, obsessively, incessantly. And I enjoy it. I love it. I live it.

I guess one bit of it is... escapism. The same reason you read, or listen to music, or watch movies... or plays, or art... there is a story in here, and it's long, complex, rich, and often fascinating. It's not just shoot-and-watch-the-gore-spatter; the background stories can be expansive and imaginative as any SF. When you read, you don't just look at the words; after a point, there's a direct flow of thought from your imagination to your conscious mind, with the words on the page just the occasional trigger. This can be as immersive.

Entertainment. Adrenaline. Reflexes. Will you rather play cricket on the road, on rock-hard tarmac? You also play with traffic. Or travel for an hour each way to get to the ground, after having booked it in advance, of course? Sad fact of life, but real-world play in an urban environment is becoming more and more inaccessible. And in a city, finding a safe nice place to play in is way easier than finding a nice, safe person(s) to play with.

On the other hand, you can curl up on a bean bag in an AC room, and immerse yourself for a couple of hours.

Ever done puzzles? I'm not talking about the crap that passes itself off as 'puzzle games'. Even stuff like Tomb Raider, like a lot of movies and books, require significant suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. Stand back and look, and you know that Ms Croft can get past the cunning trap in one way and only one way, and that one way has been conceived and created by Eidos Interactive long long before you came on the scene. You're being forced to walk down a corridor, wearing a chicken suit, with a pause every five seconds to sing the chorus lines from Eminem's Stan. If you don't do any of this, you die.

On the other hand, look at cheatcodes, easter eggs, and cracking. You're getting inside. Edit the default values in the config files, and suddenly all your tanks mooove like rocketbikes and fire unlimited nukes, our soldiers wear tank armour, and your buildings are invulnerable, and you yourself can fly, walk through walls, never run out of ammo, and use level 9 weaponry on level 1 minions, the poor creatures. The getting in, figuring it out, trying a hypothesis, seeing it work, applying it for a better experience - dopamine overproduction! It's a high of just using your head to make something happen!

More than that, sometime around 2 AM, when suddenly, everything clicks, and you're past the block, in the zone, on fire... it's a quasi-religious experience. Superego and id in perfect harmony for once, in perfect coordination, needing each other, working together. Higher brain functions shut down, worries evaporate, stress vanishes. It's just you and the game, in a world where none of the constraints apply. And it's amazing what a relaxing feeling it can be for the soul when all your troubles get boiled down to 2 simple counters - your health level and your ammunition level - and your hindbrain, too, believes that with all it has.

Stopping play is like... waking up, or falling asleep, depends on how you see it; between

.

.

Do you really want to quit? Y / N

.

.

and shutting down, getting up, water, roll into bed, drifting off... is a dreamlike, fugue state anyway. As soon as I slide into unconsciousness, REM kicks in almost instantly, picking up where the other side of that Y/N left off. Talk about an immersive experience - like most immersive experiences, this one sticks to you after you've climbed out. The next waking in the morning is even more disjointed.

It's an experience that extends way back in it's foreplay before the actual gameplay. The entire wandering through Fort, leafing through the pavement titles, one eye open for cops, making the selection, the bargaining, the wrapping up of the purchase in the inevitable black plastic bag, quick turn-down of the offer for porn ("saab english / hindi / double / triple / latest") and walk home; and the entire installation adventure, decoding the crack instructions written by a technically gifted but linguistically retarded cracker, and that rush when the game executes perfectly for the first time... this is entertainment that you work for, that you take risks for. Is that why it's that much more enjoyable?

That's it for now - I stocked up on Gears of War, Q4, Bioshock, and Max Payne 2 and HL2:Ep1 is still left with a little to go... have a good Winter-een-mas!

---

Play. Evolve.

Images thanks to Ctrl-Alt-Del and Explosm.net