12 thoughts on “Not That It’s Happened In Years…

  1. That’s pretty much right except for the spouse who wants to go cave diving (unless that’s a euphemism for kinky weird sex that’s illegal in seven states). I play a military first person shooter that took me roughly 6 months to be competent enough that a twelve year old doesn’t lecture me about my ‘gayness’ at not making a 1,000 yard headshot on a moving target to prevent the other team from capturing our flag.

  2. I’ve been on both sides of this altho I didn’t get into late night Mountain Dew and junk food fueled late night marathon video gaming sessions until my mid-20s (when I got my first computer). Once the kids came, time spent gaming went WAAAAAAAY down.

    I went to the midnight launch of Grand Theft Auto V a couple months ago. I’m only 40% of the way thru the main story missions. I know people who finished it in 3 or 4 days. I at least sometimes can manage to stay awake for an hour or two after everyone else goes to bed, and squeak in a little gaming. My wife has several games she’s bought and hasn’t even put into the xbox/playstation yet.

  3. Not a gamer, but I do remember being very perplexed when married men would get together to play into the wee hours of the morning. Something like “ya know, if a man is awake at 3am and he’s not with his wife, nothing good is going to happen.”

    Hope that Scarlett repents and offers herself to you so you can quit playing video games, Mitch. :^)

    (or, quite frankly, someone as attractive as her but without her “history”…..I wouldn’t inflict a woman who felt it was “necessary” to have semi-annual AIDS tests on anyone)

  4. If you’re an adult into both gaming and techno-thrillers, I highly recommend Neal Stephenson’s novel “REAMDE”. A key element of the book is a WOW-type game that has invented a bitcoin-like way to convert in-game gold to real-life money; the author knows the gaming community well and my daughter and I have laughed out-loud (and also been amazed) at the features available in the game and the personalities of the people in the development and play of the game.

    Beyond that, the book is also an excellent thriller, featuring the Russian mafia, Chinese hackers, Islamist terrorists and even an enclave of well-armed, off-the-grid Christian libertarian fundies. There are so many guns in the book that Stephenson hired a “ballistics editor” to ensure the references to caliber, function and features of various weapons were accurate. It’s a long book, but very entertaining.

  5. I’ll second Night Writer’s recommendation of REAMDE…and note that the Oatmeal’s characterization of MMORPGs doesn’t apply to EVE-Online. The learning curve is steep enough that without help, a lot of would-be players just give up after their two-week trial period is up. Fortunately, most of those are the kind of young jerks he’s talking about.

  6. I have a lvl 50 healer priest on WoW. I like to do randoms as a healer and when we all materialize in the dungeon I raid-chat “OMG I hope you don’t expect me to do heals!” and see how fast I’m booted.

  7. Heh, my Dad is big into WoW. He spent years and years playing Dark Age of Camelot and loved it. Then everyone in his guild/DAoC social circle jumped ship as soon as WoW was released, so he followed along. He doesn’t like it as much as he did DAoC but he’s got at least 1 level 80 character and a few other level 70s.

  8. BB: Yes, altho it’s more like D&D with millions of players doing their own thing and forming their own guilds without a DM.

  9. Milbank’s piece has to be read to be believed:
    “My former colleague Tom Ricks proposes bringing back the draft in the United States”
    Ricks is a Yalie who never served in the military. So is Milbank.

    There is no better explanation for what has gone wrong in Washington in recent years than the tabulation done every two years of how many members of Congress served in the military.

    I hope Milbank’s parents didn’t expect that Yale degree to convey the power of analytical thinking.

    This is the lowest percentage of veterans in Congress since World War II, down from a high of 77 percent in 1977-78, according to the American Legion.

    There is that whole “World War Two” thing, isn’t there? Gosh, I wonder if that could have had anything to do with there being so many vets in congress in 1977-78? Milbank apparently longs for the Golden Age of Jimmy Carter, Watergate, and economic Malaise.
    What a frikkin’ moron.

  10. Milbank’s conclusion – government was better because more served in the military – was the best. Meaning worst.

    Correlation doesn’t equal causation.

    And they were people who served during an existential threat to this nation. We have no such thing today. They propose turning the military into another social program.

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