We're Twins

I don't know, but this made me laugh. I was looking through old paperdolls and coloring books online and saw this one. It just tickled me:

Poetry Friday

Sonnet XVII

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

-Pablo Neruda


Now, that's a love poem. I love Neruda.

I mean, come on, that is adorable

Nine lives

I have a strange affinity for sports bloopers and animal survival stories. Here are a few animal stories from an msn article today.

Trip Down Gamery Lane

Yeah - I said Gamery Lane - didn't have time to come up with an awesome pun, sorry. This might be a crazy boring post to most, but it always blows my mind to see pictures of the things from my childhood - images that are so familiar, yet so distant.

We had a nook in the wall of the basement, which served as our play room, growing up. In this nook all the board games were kept. I remember staring at those shelves trying to decide which game to play; we had the basics: Monopoly (takes too long), Clue (need more people to play). Then we had the weird ones we never really played like the Uncle Wiggily game



or the Secret of Nimh game that I received as a gift, although I still have never seen that movie.

Once in a while we'd get out Waterworks - but I don't know if I ever quite got it (my drama teacher would later give me the nickname "Waterworks" in high school). I mean who came up with the idea to have a game about repairing leaky water pipes with miniature wrenches?


When I was by myself I would sometimes play Park and Shop - yeah all by myself, I'd play as two people.



When we felt ambitious we'd play Mystery Mansion - an awesome game where you put rooms of a mansion together and find hidden treasure.



Possibly Careers, although that could get long too.



My favorite games when I was a young kid were Husker Du and Candyland. I remember my Dad would play Candyland with me on his bed while he watched the evening news.

To this day one of my favorite games is Battleship. I loved the red and blue boxes, with the blue glassy screens.

Also on the game shelf sat Spirograph, where you could create a multitude of cool patterns.

One of the best things on the shelf were the Fashion Plates, belonging to my oldest sister. You picked a face, a torso, legs, and shoes. Then you could also pick from different patterns to give the clothes texture and finally you could color them. They were great, the girls were pretty. Perfect girl toy.





I was just going to have board game reflections today, but then I started thinking about the Atari games we played. One of the most exciting Christmas gifts we ever got was the Atari 2600. We all wanted it so much and we actually got it! We had/have a ton of games. I wish I could go home and play it tonight (but alas it's in Utah at my parents').

We had a lot of weird games that I never quite figured out like Riddle of the Sphinx




Sort of lame ones like Wabbit




But there were so many awesome games. Maybe my favorite is Maze Craze - it's simple, but so fun to race to that finish line and there were a billion different levels/variations.



There was Space Invaders - obviously




Jungle Hunt - sort of repetitive




Montezuma's Revenge - always got to a point where I couldn't figure out what else to do,




Asteroids




Vanguard




Berzerk




Sea Hunt




Enduro




Atlantis




Combat always made us laugh pretty hard - it was so much fun to continually blast people into oblivion - tanks or planes, either way.




Oh, man this next one was so weird - Sorcerer. The music from this game will be emblazened in my head for all time, I think. If you wanna hear it go here. Hearing that makes me laugh. That site is pretty fun - and you can hear and play a lot of the games, fyi. The sounds are seriously making me laugh like crazy.




I keep posting this and then finding more Atari games on this site that I totally forgot about and need to add, like Shark Attack, it was scary:




I strangely got really into the game Taz. You were the Tasmanian Devil and you had to not eat dynamite, but eat food - many different levels of different foods - I would spend a lot of time with that game - I would get so very far, until it sped up so very very fast.





Playstation, Nintendo, Xbox, Wii - none of them will ever take the place in my heart of the Atari 2600.

Good times.

What are some of your favorite gaming memories?

Just because

Independence Day

My poor blog is so neglected these days - I just don't seem to have time anymore, oh wellsy.

We had a nice 4th of July weekend. I got out of work at 1:00 on Thursday, which was lovely. Friday I was off and we went and saw Public Enemies - pretty cool. Yesterday for the 4th we went to Chelsea and Grant's house in the City of Culver City. City. While we drove over we listened to Monster Ballads - which made me feel very patriotic. At Chelsea's and Grant's we had turkey burgers, a mango/corn/bean slaw thing, watermelon, chips, root beer and finished it off with some coconut cupcakes with lime buttercream frosting. Yummers. It all felt very Summery and Americana. We then attempted to watch The Sandlot - which turned out to sort of blow, in a "it was good when we were kids, but is now just weird" way. We then went to a park to watch fireworks. On the car ride home Whit and I listened to best of Broadway. It was a really nice 4th and made me appreciate our American traditions - hair metal, broadway, food and family.

That's Incredible

I love this video. Whit and Nathan had a fantastic show at UCB last night, "That's Incredible". They are a great duo. Good job, guys.