Why I love The Last Starfighter

Decisions, decisions. I recently moved to my new house and when it came time to decorate my man cave I wanted to added a touch of geek. Unfortunately, Chuck stole my poster idea.  So I had to get creative. Besides, who needs a Tron poster? Too generic. Too many geeks would put that up. But, what about The Last Starfighter? I probably watched it 100 times as a kid (yay for VCRs). As a matter of fact, it makes my top ten movies of all time (a list to be created later). I am now in search of where to get a good price on the poster.

I started to think about the story line and realized why I love The Last Starfighter so much. It is about a gamer. Since gaming was in its infancy in the early 80s, I’m thinking it was one of the first gamer movies (after Tron). A kid from the trailer park plays a video game that gets him recruited to become a Starfighter. That’s like gamer heaven. Some other things that make The Last Starfighter Ahh-mazin’:

1. Two words: Death Blossom
2. The Music Man’s Robert Preston as Centauri.
3. The aliens are able to create amazing starcraft but can’t fix baldness.
4. Zandozans look like Mon Calamari (I told you I was a geek)

Gospel According to World of Warcraft

I thought long and hard about writing a book about the parallels between World of Warcraft and following Christ. I have since stopped playing WOW but here were some of my chapter headings I had planned:

What’s in a (Guild) Name?
LFG (Looking for Group)
Hold me its Patch Day!
Barrens Chat – Chuck Norris, Your Mama, Noobs and You
Leeeroy Jenkins!
Gold Farming
Spammers in Major Cities
Dinging 80
Carrot on a Stick
Link the Loot
Hardcore vs. Casual Raiders

I can’t remember anymore at the moment but I had to get them out of my head! Did I miss any?

Embracing my Geekness

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

I have admitted on occasion that I am a geek. Unfortunately, we haven’t completely taken over the world and some people feel it is okay to make fun of the geek. Woe is you my friend, woe is you!

I am usually reserved and try not to let people know that I like a good wookie joke as anybody else. Thinkgeek.com has a gadget or shirt or mug for just about everything geeky! I would wear almost all of them. But then I get those looks from “outsiders” (muggles, normals, w/e). I am torn.

I am trying to be comfortable in my own skin but I still don’t like the knowing stares of someone that shows they disapprove. Anybody out there feel my pain?

Legacy (i think)

I went home for Christmas and had a single task to accomplish: find a legacy from my dad and grandfather. No big deal right?

The metal chairs I used to stare at

I didn’t know my grandfather, Jack. He died when I was 4 and a half so I don’t have a single memory of him. When I think of him I am immediately transported to my grandparent’s front yard and these old school green metal chairs. But no picture of him. It almost seems like I am 4 again and I am staring at his feet in the chair.

I asked my family about him and I heard both good and bad. Either they worshipped the ground he walked on or they hated how he treated his family, especially my grandmother.

So, on to my father for a legacy because I don’t want the legacy of my granddad. But what kind of legacy am I wanting? That’s what I was after. I just wanted to find something, anything that I could relate to my father about.

One of the things I’ve decided to take up is leatherworking. I can’t afford the tools and space for woodworking but leatherworking is possible. And that decision to choose leatherworking this past December is what set me on my journey for a legacy. You see, one of the core tools for leatherworking is a rotary punch. And I remembered my dad had one! He wasn’t a leatherworker but he did work with leather harnesses for horses and I remember that tool. Now where was it?Had it survived? Was it in his things in storage? Was it still in the old barn that hasn’t been touched in over a decade? Now I had my mission over the holidays: find that piece of my dad’s history.

Nerd vs. Geek

A friend of mine keeps calling me a nerd. I really don’t think he means to be insulting but every time I hear it I get all emo about it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the term Geek.  It’s just Nerd that bothers me. I decided to look up the origin of geek. It started out to mean a fool and then became the name of early circus freaks (the wild men if you were around in the early 1900s, otherwise, who cares which actual freaks it meant? OCD much?) Then it became a term to refer to someone who spent a lot of time on one thing, especially technology. It is funny to me sometimes because I love technology. I’m typing this on a tethered Iphone that is running an older OS than 3.2 b/c even though I can’t have MMS on my Iphone with this version I prefer to have the tethering. Geek speak see? 

To me, a nerd is out of touch with humanity. They cannot relate to normal people. They are considered uncool and socially inept. Okay, maybe I’m both but I don’t want to be told I am. Geeks can have normal lives. Geeks just happen to be better at something than most people. (that wasn’t meant to sound prideful but it came across that way. Forgive me). Unlike nerds, Geeks can actually carry on a conversation with “normal” people. I am going to try and do better when I get called a nerd. (although nerd rage would be a good term for what I feel).

The end of the World of Warcraft as We Know It

The end of the World of Warcraft as We Know It

I started playing because it was a nice outlet away from church planting and everything related to it. I was wound a little (translation: a lot) too tight leading up to that time. I got addicted and gave up sleep for the rest of the first year. I think my addiction to the game got better but the only real way for me to stop was to actually delete all my characters. It took the course of a week to actually sever ties in the game and delete my toons (the gaming term for characters – see you learn so much useless knowledge from my parenthetical comments!).

The hardest part about leaving the game was the fact that I pray for several friends regularly, Greg, Tyler, Frank and Cassie, Gankwun (I never even learned his first name but then he had to quit for family reasons. I still consider him a close “friend.” He called me Gong. lol), Shane and Dan, to name a few. Another reason it was hard was because unlike many video games you actually invest into specific characters. Games like Starcraft start you over at scratch every time you play. The same goes for Halo in the pvp (player vs. player) context. I actually leveled three toons to the highest level in the game and was good at playing those classes. It was nice to be told, “you are good at what you do.”

I almost wrote The Gospel According to World of Warcraft but never had the guts (or time since I was playing wow) to do it. So many people are playing this one game. Last I checked, over 12 million subscribers. That’s more people than the entire population of Georgia! (the country or the state). People want community and they will find it. A place to belong. A place to find acceptance not based on actual physical appearances. The church should be that way but sadly most don’t find it like that.

The average age of a gamer in America is now 35 years old. That means I’m average! Even a little younger than average! Yay! So many people couldn’t understand my desire to “play a game.” Here’s a few points. I grew up with an Atari, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, warcraft, and starcraft. Gaming has always been available to my generation. It cost $12 a month to play Warcraft as much as I wanted. I can’t even get a round of golf in once a month for that amount. But, if I were to go golfing a couple of times a month (more money) people would see that as totally acceptable. Why? I don’t get any physical benefits from golf. I would have to be EXTREMELY out of shape to actually get a workout from golf (I do golf). Why are some hobbies “acceptable” and others aren’t? It’s unknown to the generations before me. If you didn’t get into the gaming revolution yourself then it is a foreign world. Some of us found a way to be good at something and ran with it.

I know what some of you are thinking. How could you play World of Warcraft? Doesn’t it contain wizards and warlocks and demons? Well, I have a good grasp on what is reality and fantasy. Wow is fantasy. It’s not even the realistic kind of gaming like some shoot ‘em ups. i.e. Ridiculously large swords and gear compared to sniper rifles, grenades, machine guns, chainsaws (that was a Doom reference – oh how I miss the chainsaw!), etc. I don’t go around trying to put a spell on someone or doing things from WOW. That’s why I liked it. It was an escape. It was also the teamwork and friendships.

Terms I learned from World of Warcraft:

Toon – used to describe your different characters. You “roll a toon” meaning you create a specific character. I think the idea of rolling goes back to DnD days when you actually rolled dice to get your attributes. That was way geeky but I am not going to translate it.

W00t – used to celebrate an achievement or finding a good piece of loot or really any happy event.

PVP – Player vs. Player. My favorite part of WOW. This is when you actually play against other people on your server and nearby battlegroups. You never know what a human player will do. You have a good idea but that’s the fun of it. Best fun for me was trying to learn and be good at arena (which is a form of pvp).

Zerging – Reference from Starcraft where players “zerg” (attack with lots and lots of folks at the same time) a specific area to gain control of it. Used in PVP.

Aggro – When a hostile creature/boss “notices” you. By notice I mean they attempt to kill you.

Tanks/DPS/Healer – The roles when playing in a dungeon. Tanks are to keep all the aggro so they are taking all the damage. The healers are to keep the tanks alive. The DPS (damage per second) are the damage dealers that roll their face over the keyboard until the tank yells the boss is down so they can then ninja loot from the tanks and healers.

Ninja – to steal loot or resources from another player.

Year in Review

Year in Review

So much has happened this year that radically affects who I am. Let’s see where to start:

Well, how about with things I started:

Ran a marathon – 18 weeks before the Country Music Marathon I set out to train for it. What I didn’t know was that the novice training was for runners who had been running for at least a year and was getting about 20 miles a week beforehand. I ran maybe three times last year for a total of 10 miles. lol. What was I thinking? Well, I needed something to focus on. I needed a challenge. A goal. I am obsessive, driven, compulsive, whatever you want to call it. I did train and I did finish the marathon. 26.2 miles. Crazy for me to think about. Now, a 3 mile run sounds like cake (although if I went out and did it I figure I would be hurting). 3 miles sounded like crazy talk last year. Here’s the rub: Running the marathon just depresses me when I think about it. I didn’t get that frail, I mean runner’s physique from it. I just plodded along and did my miles and never pushed it. Don’t get me wrong, if I had pushed it I would have likely injured myself in training or on the day of the race but for me that’s where the excitement is. I ran a marathon and technically it wasn’t that hard for me to do. It didn’t change my life. It makes me mad to think about it in a sense. Not mad at the marathon. Mad at myself for feeling like this.

Now for things I stopped:

Stopped playing basketball – I will come back to this at a later time but I was running with a group of very good players. The thought of trying to get back out there and relearn the rhythm of the game actually paralyzes me and keeps me away. I love basketball. What am I doing not playing basketball? I quit it to train for the marathon. The marathon was in April. I have run three times since.

Stopped playing World of Warcraft – Again, another post will come about my time here. I played the game from August 2007 until September 2009. So many good memories are there. Some of it even occurs around the game. Most of it comes from the friendships I gained during that time. One of my best friends IRL (in real life) started pretty much with WOW. Why did I stop? First off, to honor my wife. She is my joy and in order to continue to play I would have to give up time with her. I am not willing to do that anymore. This is affecting me in lots of ways at the moment. Withdrawal (it is an addiction I am certain of that), depression, feelings of loss. If I didn’t know better I am going through the stages of grief. Come to think of it, that is exactly how I’m feeling. Something that has been a part of my life for over two years is now no more. Hmm.. I’ll have to think more on that and how to deal with it. (the whole reason for this blog is so I can discover things like I just did. w00t!)

Stopped running marathons – Once and done. 5Ks are more my speed (and that is only because I don’t know of any places to run 50 yard dashes with people – that’s my sweet spot).

Stopped having migraines, sort of – I have dealt with migraines as far back as middle school. The frequency and intensity of my migraines has changed but lately I was dealing with 5-6 migraines a week. In other words, I lived in constant dread of a migraine and then after a migraine had to deal with the after effects (not clear headed, irritable, absent minded – at least I hope it is the migraines making me that way). Turns out I probably have cluster headaches. They are considered worse than migraines. I would agree. So, I started taking Wellbutrin XL and it seems to be working. I have only had one migraine in the past 50 days or so. I did get a second one on Tuesday of this week and I don’t think it has really stopped yet. I am praying this is just a one time event. Now when I do get a migraine they are some of the worst I’ve ever had.

Things I need to start or improve upon:

Losing weight. I didn’t lose a single pound from the marathon. Why? I love to eat. For the first time in years I ate whatever I wanted and didn’t feel guilty. If I hadn’t been running all those miles each week I would have gained 100 pounds (give or take a few). Then I finished the marathon and kept eating away (see Fruity Pebbles post) /sigh

Loving God’s Word. Don’t get me wrong. I love it. If you have ever seen me teach from the Bible you know it lights a fire in me. I just don’t cherish and memorize and internalize it like I should. I’m starting with the memorization of the first chapter of James. I challenged the students at Grace Park to do the same in hopes of walking that journey with them and finding that it can change their life.

Becoming a better communicator. I am trying to grow in my capacity to teach. I don’t want to manipulate but to better bring to life the Words of God. It is a travesty when people (including myself) make the Bible boring. It is anything but boring.

It appears I have stopped a lot more things than I started. In fact, the only thing I started was to run the marathon and I stopped that as well. Hmm…