My virtual world

It's been months since my last post and the ones preceding that one can only be described as sporadic at best. If you must know, dear reader, I've been busy.

Yes, busy--tending to my virtual town called 'Smee Bay.' Thanks to me, Smee Bay has four varieties of non-indigenous fruits as well as a complete collection of dinosaur fossils on display in the local museum. I am popular among all my neighbors because I gossip with them, write letters and bring them medicine when they are sick. Smee Bay is a perfect town owing to my landscaping efforts; I tend to flowers and trees once a day, removing any weeds and trash. I've won trophies in fishing, bug catching, and flower arranging. The residents of the neighboring town Boondox have given me a rare gift, a feather, in appreciation of my donations which allow them to eat something better than grilled dirt. I wrote the town tune, which is really just the opening of the fourth movement of Mozart's Symphony 41. And I've amassed a fortune by growing turnips and selling them on the Stalk Market.

"You spend more time in your virtual world than in the real one," DH would say, half as a joke. But he was mystified and somewhat annoyed by my recent preoccupation.

This charge--avoidance of the real world--is often levvied at geeks, dreamers, and those who overstay in what should only be a temporary escape in an imagined space. The value of this space mystifies the practical-minded, but serves as a refuge for the alienated. It serves no purpose but to provide some semblance of control for those who in real life are acted upon external forces they cannot control.

That is, it is much easier to care for a virtual bunny rabbit than a real one that may decide to stop eating, bite or scratch you when you try to administer meds, and flick their feet at you (the rabbit equivalent of giving you the finger) for your trouble. It's much easier to pay off the sizeable mortgage on your gigantic six-bedroom virtual house by selling fruits and turnips than it is to drag yourself out of bed each morning to a job in service to graduate school loans. Note, the graduate degree would pertain to a field which outlook most people describe as "bleak"or "moribund" and ensures that the prospect of supporting yourself will be a great challenge even in a good economy, without taking into account the 15-year shadow of debt you just incurred. It's just easier in a virtual setting to get those little everyday victories that people need. You don't need to possess any real skills--knowledge of cooking, dancing, music, or surgery--but simply the willingness to apply yourself. Also, real life does not have a reset button.

No matter how complex a programmer can design a simulation of life, variables must be limited in any model (assuming it's a logical simulation). Once the mini-world becomes predictable, you start to cheat or test the boundaries with illogical scenarios. Once that ceases to amuse, you start thinking of yourself as a solitary hamster in a fancy wheel. And you start to feel self pity.


to the whole not labeling to Flickr
I've been feeling lazy
And sometimes tired. Like this whole effort with Smee and Mit and Flickr and my writing.
and Steve too
Sometimes I think it is bullshit.
sujiestar: are you writing more?
me: I'm putting forth this effort
for nothing.
I'm only half nourished by the effort.
But if my efforts all meet with the backs of people's heads or people who just go: "Uhhuh-uhhuh"
Well, why do it?
And in the end, it isn't anyone else's issue. Maybe what I have to say really isn't all that important. It certainly doesn't feel like it.