Replicating one's own patterns in life online is not hard. The little excesses creep in. The time consuming guilty pleasure gets too much. Purpose and meaning often elude one. Having worked on a considerable project to only a halfway point this summer, the ennui of one's own thoughts, however inspired, even become a stale hunk of reality. This time the catharsis came as Sven Stoop. 
Sven's a balding middle age guy fighting the idea of a real gut and perfectly happy wearing black socks with shorts. Glasses and goatee complete the whole Gen_X turns forty thing. It's not HalfLife, but that's what I kept calling the online first person role playing phenom known as Second Life. It's basically anonymous 3D chatting with the idea that your virtual world can make your real world seem better. But if no one ever comments on your blog, why not ? Otherwise you have to go out or join organizations to interact with people. Well old Sven met a chickie right off the bat in the Ron Paul room. Search 'libertarian', teleport. She was impressed how far I had come in my first ten minutes.
Giving it a week was probably either generous or simply not enough. The teleport option came quick. Having been on the cusp of video games all one's life, I opted out about the time online games started to get popular and advanced. Battlefield 1942 seemed cool, but new babies and old houses take a lot of time. The former cries a lot if the latter requires too much. Lately it's just been Ron Paul news and the predictable lot of blog reading and writing. Whatever pain accompanies downloading a 200 MB client for a jaunt through virtual world is soon overcome with the knowledge that hard drives and connection speeds have increased dramatically over the years. With approximately two to three weeks before an equally surreal trip to the MagiKingdom, assuming an anonymous life on what's being touted as Web '2.0' didn't seem like the crime it might have been three weeks ago when racing the weather on the shutters needing painting. You can create your own perfect body and face with clothes to boot in the virtual world.
After a visit to a custom gaming lounge at one of the prominent Universities with a colleague who teaches there, my interest was renewed in the gaming life. My wife and I left off on the groundbreaking Age of Empires. The final straw was watching the sun come up one Sunday morning as we realized our day was now toast having done so.
Visiting the friend who originally introduced us to to AOE, he's into dogs and World of Warcraft now. After foregoing a promised chess game because of a promised rendezvous amongst an elite group of adventurers, I actually settled in and was entranced by the game for almost an hour. It's one thing to watch it, but I declined the 5 set of DVD's which would allow me up to ten days of free play. I also did the Dungeons and Dragons thing as a kid.
When I was a kid they hadn't finished EPCOT ( Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) when visiting the Magic Kingdom. Our nation's changed a little bit since then. The Red Sox have won the World Series not once, but twice. The cold war is over. Computers fit under your desk now and the Internet connects it all in a flood of imagery and colors. While the Red Sox nation seems ubiquitous at Disney nowadays, it's remarkable to note that the entire EPCOT world has no Middle Eastern country in it, only the big ones (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China) and our immediate neighbors, Mexico and Canada. While the vast majority of vacationers at the Magic Kingdom are there to escape their own human suffering with the ease of the Disney service and fantasy, you would never know that we were occupying two foreign countries by visiting the American Experience exhibit.
It is a little less imposing when Disney security checks your bag or scans an index finger. It's a private voluntary affair. When the TSA grabs your toothpaste or won't let you back into to the terminal to collect your family, the difference is obvious. One is a world of authority and power, the other caters to you as a customer and minimizes the hassles. You can still let your kid ride on your shoulders in the Magic Kingdom. Try doing that at the museum in NYC.
No TV, Internet or Radio is good for five days. It's bad listening to the cable shows go on about the Presidency with such bias and ridiculous banter about the he said she said thing with Obama & Hillary. It gets so bad, that you fantasize about a 24/7 Liberty network out there somewhere. Sure there are podcasts, but how many people listen ? It's a start. Maybe the future is YouTube, UStream or JustinTV (Ron Paul does it). I dunno, but when blogging gets boring, news predictable sometimes you gotta go elsewhere, at least for a while. It's always good to come home though.
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