A Pilgrim's Digression

Apple TV in the palm of your hand

So the rumor has become reality, and yesterday Apple released their revamped Apple TV.  Overall, I’m pretty excited about it, though I haven’t completely made up my mind about whether to buy one.  Here’s the details, as laid out in a slightly critical Techi review:

…the box is tiny; it’s streaming only, and it has done away with storage in favor of a rental-only model; rentals are 99 cents for TV shows and $4.99 for first run movies, both in HD (though 720p); it can stream content from computers and from an iOS device; it also has access to Netflix, YouTube, Flickr and MobileMe galleries.

The downside, at least for that author, seems to be the lack of storage, the “reliance” on iTunes, and current rental offerings being confined to Fox and ABC.

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When thinking about what I might write about today, the subject of pop culture and its effect on young brains was not even remotely on my list of topics, until I read an article by Andrew O’Hehir at Salon, “Why my kids are pop culture illiterate.”

I started to read the article with my snobbery-detecting sensors on full alert, but soon decided that if there was anything pretentious about O’Hehir, he was putting it into his other articles on homeschooling.  However, it should be noted that I am public school educated and in my youth, one of my babysitters, among many other fictional characters, was a scantily clad woman named Jeannie (TBS after school re-runs, I miss you!).

I am not inclined to sympathy with homeschoolers or people who make what I believe are unproven claims about the harm of too much TV watching, as it was called in my youth, or “media consumption” as it is called today.  I have a bias, I freely admit it.  But the purpose of my writing is not just that I have a dog in the fight, but that I genuinely believe that a child is better off engaged with the culture, from an early age, rather than living in cultural isolation.

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Last week, I wrote a post reminiscing about my best friend in elementary school, and it prompted other thoughts about how we formed and maintained relationships back then, in the early eighties.

Thinking back, it’s interesting how the telephone played a relatively minor role in the friendships I formed.   I used it mainly to call my friends to see if they were free to play.  I’d ask if they wanted to come over, or sometimes I’d ask if I could come over to their house.

There’s an amusing story related to the latter request.   My friend Murray’s Mom was a school teacher, what we would today call a Special Ed. teacher in fact.  Whether this made her particularly grouchy when she was at home, I am not sure.  She was typically a fairly cold woman, however.  She never had much to say to me when I visited, unless it was to correct my manners.  She is the one who told me I should never “invite myself” over when I called.  What she was referring to was my habit of finding myself bored at home and phoning Murray to ask “can I come over?”  She called this “inviting myself,” and apparently it was poor manners.

I’m sure she would have a few words for my son and his friends.

It confused the hell out of me, because how else was I going to find out if I could come over?  Was I supposed to sit waiting by the phone for Murray to call me?  I can remember Murray and I using some subterfuge to get around her restrictions.  I’d tell him at school to ask his Mom if he could invite me over, and then he’d call me later and invite me.

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Yesterday, there was a discussion over at the Washington Post about Facebook.  The discussion took place in Carolyn Hax’s user forums, the Hax-Philes.

Hax asked, “Do you use Facebook? Do you refuse to use it—due to its privacy policies, or just because you have other ways you’d prefer to waste your time? Are you agnostic toward it, and would you sign up if you ever felt the need? Has your position strengthened or strained your friendships, or not made any real difference?”

The question itself is a bit trite at this point.  Have nothing original to ask your readers?  Let them debate the merits of Facebook.  It’s sort of the online equivalent of trying to start conversation at a dinner party by asking your guests their opinions on abortion.  Everyone’s got an opinion about Facebook, and it can be strident.  I’m guilty of stridency, as well.

The responses to Hax’s question were all the type of answers I’ve read before, chiefly that Facebook allows users to stay in better touch with friends and family.  There was also the time-honored, “FB has reconnected me to people I haven’t seen in years, particularly high school and college and previous workplaces.”  It was this latter comment by a user that prompted me to ask the question, why is that such a good thing?

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I didn’t make it through the weekend.  Ironically, I was so worried about not making it through the day alone on Saturday, but it was Saturday night, after L. returned home from shopping, that I gave in and resubscribed to World of Warcraft.

L. wasn’t pleased, but she didn’t protest loudly, either.  She joked that she might have to stage an intervention at some point.

I could easily keep silent about my failure to quit WoW, not tell any of my friends.  No one would know the difference, except me.  It would keep the story nice and tidy: I wanted to quit World of Warcraft, and I did so after a brief struggle.  Life is rarely tidy, however.

I told L. I am going to play differently, this time.  I’m not going to allow the game to take over so much of my life.  So far, that seems to be holding true.  According to my playtime log, I played only three hours this weekend, most of it on Saturday night after resubscribing.

One thing I did was return to my Alliance guild.  No hiding Horde-side.  After a little over a month away, I found that they had beat their summer doldrums and were finally progressing in ICC 10.  Many people who had quit around the same time I “quit” had returned.  It felt good to see familiar names in gchat and to feel like I belonged to a group again.

Still, I don’t know why I had to resubscribe and come back.  I simply went back to the old routines with the same old characters: I ran Heroics and did some dailies.  I’m not going to raid.  I still don’t feel like working on any of the achievements like Loremaster or Seeker.  I don’t feel like PvP-ing.  So why come back?

I think I came back just because I felt I needed it to fill up some space in my life.  However, I did enjoy playing this weekend, though perhaps that was merely the effect of not playing my Alliance characters for so long.  For once, I was playing because I enjoyed the game, not out of routine…even though the things I was doing were routine, to me.

It felt good setting fire to creatures with my Warlock, or healing a Heroic with my Shammy.  What I really enjoyed was playing my Paladin, whom I left at the end of June sitting in Darnassus with unleveled professions.  I had dropped Mining/Blacksmithing for Herbalism/Alchemy right about the time I left Alliance, so I still had some skilling up to do.  I worked on that much of my playtime Saturday night.  It was relaxing, running around gathering herbs even though I could have bought them.  While gathering herbs in Feralas, I even made a brief detour through Dire Maul, just to get back in practice with my Retribution rotation.

It’s hard to tell where I will go from here.  I’m in the game for at least another thirty days, at which point I may try again to quit.  Or maybe I will keep playing.  I’d like to think things really are different this time, but that may be like the return smoker’s promise to only smoke half a pack a day, rather than the whole 20 cigarettes.

Tonight, I don’t want to play.  I want to watch the last two episodes of season 2 of The Legend of the Seeker.  We’ll see whether that works out as planned, or not.

I am finding it difficult to talk about my quitting World of Warcraft without resorting to the language of addiction.  Thus the word of the day is “trigger”: “Anything that has been repeatedly associated with the use of alcohol and drugs, thereby becoming a “conditioned stimulus.” Although it was initially psychologically neutral, exposure to it now will stimulate a thought about or craving for the substance.”

It’s a rainy Saturday, windy and cool, so there is no reason to go outside.  My wife and son have been gone all day, back-to-school shopping.  This would normally be the kind of day that I’d indulge for hours in some WoW playtime.  It’s been tough resisting.  I’ve thought again and again about reactivating my account.  I’ve tried going over in my mind all the reasons I quit to begin with, but it’s tough thinking of them when the alternate part of my brain, the part that still wants to play WoW, is thinking of many more reasons why I ought to play.

A little bit ago, I even went out to Wal-Mart, just “curious” if they actually sold the game cards.  I went in, thinking, “well, fifteen dollars for 30 days of play isn’t that much, after all, and just because I reactivate my account doesn’t mean I have to play.”  I can control it, I said to myself.  I won’t play as much.  I’ll use the parental controls to limit my playtime, or at least send me that weekly report about number of hours played.

Wal-Mart does sell the cards, but the only ones my Wal-Mart had in stock were the 60 day cards for $29.96.  In the end, I couldn’t justify the purchase, even to my addiction rattled mind.

I left without making the purchase and instead sought comfort in some greasy fast food.

Back home, feeling tense, and still wavering on my commitment to quit, I sat in my son’s room and began sorting his LEGOs by size/style.  I’ve always found that doing something organizational sometimes relieves stress for me.  When I was in Graduate School and needed a break from writing, I’d work jigsaw puzzles.

I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep this up, though.  There is nothing but my own willpower stopping me from going in there right now, activating my account, and logging on.  Even L. can’t stop me, really.  I called her up when I was on my way to Wal-Mart and told her what I was doing.  Her attitude is sort of laissez-faire: there are worse habits, and I’m a big boy who can do what I want.

I guess the question is, am I putting myself through this hell for nothing?  There are men with what might be called addictions to sports and other activities.  No one suggests they quit, do they?  I used to read rather compulsively, and it would never have occurred to me that I read too much and ought to cut back or quit.

So what’s wrong with video games?  Why do I feel like I need to restrict myself from a game I enjoy?

I have to remind myself: “Because I wasn’t enjoying it.  I wasn’t enjoying it much at all.  I was playing compulsively, not for the fun of it.”

I think if I’m going to get through this, I need to do two things: I need to stop listening to WoW podcasts, and I need to stop reading WoW-related news.  Both of these things also act as triggers, reminding me of the game and what I’m missing.  It’s sort of like how smokers find it difficult to quit if they continue hanging around with smokers or continue doing the same activities, in the same way, as before.  I had a psychology professor in college who spoke about quitting cigarettes and how he’d deliberately go to smoke-filled places like bars, just to inhale second-hand smoke.  And after awhile, he started smoking again.  He had to leave all those places behind in order to really quit.

I just don’t know that I’m going to be able to do this.  If I get through this weekend, next weekend, L. is going to Charlottesville, and I’ll be home alone again all day Saturday.  As tough as it has been so far this weekend, I think it’s going to be tougher next Saturday.

Maybe I ought to just give in and get it over with.  What I’d like to do is tell my old Alliance guildmates I’m coming back, reactivate my account, log in, and…

And I don’t know.  Do what?  What is there for me to do?  Will anyone even care that I’ve returned?  No, probably not.  But I’ll have to live with the fact that once again, I tried to quit and couldn’t do it.  Another week or a month will pass, and I’ll be bored out of my skull again, angry at the game for its hold on me, angry at myself for being so weak.

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.  It’s so easy just to give in, and maybe after playing again for a little, I’ll discover that the desire was pretty illusory after all.  Maybe what I need to quit is not abstinence, but just to give in one more time, just to prove that whatever fun I think I’ll have will be as ephemeral as the smoker’s first nicotine high after a week of being smoke-free.

Ink-Blot: a man and woman fighting, or a vagina?

I didn’t expect to continue reading the John Updike novel Couples.  I read about fifty pages over the weekend, and his writing style seemed like it would turn me off to the book.  Well, I still don’t like his style.  But I’m reading the book anyway.

It’s difficult to explain.  I don’t care for any of the characters.  None of them are really memorable, and I keep getting them mixed up.  I can’t tell Frank from Freddie.  Is Harold married to Marcia or Janet?  Who is Georgene married to?  It doesn’t help that all these people, and others I haven’t mentioned, are sleeping together.  It’s hard to keep couples straight when they are coupling with other couples.

Anyway.  I’ve kept reading, and the reason why is the reason I’ve continued reading all my life.  I’m looking for insight into my own particular condition.  The people in this novel are all married thirty-somethings.  There is one couple in their late twenties, but so far they are a bit outside the primary circle of relationships.

I keep asking myself, is this how people my age get along together?  Is this what people do in their spare time?  I wish the book provided a little more insight into how these couples meet and become friends, because that’s a central question in mine and my wife’s life now, how to meet like-minded people in our age group with whom we can relate and be friends.

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A Troll Priest confronts his inner turmoil

What I’ve found hardest about quitting World of Warcraft is filling the time I used to spend playing the game.  On weekends, that is a lot of time to fill.  Particularly over the last few months, I’d formed a habit of getting up earlier than my family and playing WoW for as much as three or four hours.  When my first WoW-free weekend rolled around, I still got up early on Saturday, but couldn’t settle on anything to do.  I felt restless and bored.

I could have went back to bed, of course.  Instead, I watched Mad Max on Netflix.  I’ve watched a lot of Netflix recently as a way of coping.

Perhaps there is an argument to be made that watching lots of movies isn’t much better than playing WoW for hours.  At least in WoW, there may be some human interaction, and of course playing WoW engages the mind more than watching movies.

I’ve heard people make that argument before.  ”Well I could be frying my brain on reality shows, but instead I play WoW.”  To each his own.  I grew up on TV.  I grew up on video games.  It’s like comparing apples and apples, as far as I’m concerned.  We’d all be better off living in a 19th century entertainment wasteland, I sometimes think, our only diversions being books, traveling theater troupes, and each other.

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Spirit Healer in World of Warcraft

After one failed attempt at quitting in July, I believe I have finally given up WoW.  Last Monday, I cancelled my account for the second time, and so far it has remained cancelled.

That wasn’t the case back in late June, when I announced to friends and guild mates that I was done.  I cancelled my account, but within a couple days had renewed it.  Then I left for a week-long, WoW-free fishing trip to Ontario.  When I got back, after being free of WoW for nearly seven days, I should have tried cancelling again.

Instead, I began playing again, secretly, because I couldn’t admit to anyone that I had failed.  Instead of playing my Alliance main characters, I leveled my Horde alts that no one knew about.  I played guildless and friendless, mostly alone although I did group a lot using the random dungeon finder.  The main character I was leveling was a Troll priest.

As a testament to how much I was playing, compulsively playing I should add, I got that priest to 80 and began gearing him by healing Heroics, and then I turned my attention to an Orc Shaman.  I’d created her years ago and never leveled her past 16 and never imagined I’d ever level her any farther, but I was in the throes of something beyond my control.  By the time I quit last Monday, she was 62 and in Outlands.

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In his introduction to my copy of Malamud’s A New Life, Jonathan Lethem refers to the book as Malamud’s “Richard Yate’s book,” and I find the comparison interesting on a number of levels.  I’ve read almost all of Yates’ novels, and what I’ve always appreciated about them, especially Revolutionary Road, is the brutal honesty with which Yates portrays human relationships.  Frank and April Wheeler fight like a real married couple, and it is sometimes horrifying to read.

Malamud also seems to have an aptitude for honestly capturing the way we live and love.  This morning on the train, I read a scene from A New Life that is likely to stay in my mind a long time as an exemplar of true writing.  Seymour Levin, thirty years old and eager to find love, has succeeded in seducing a colleague in the English Department, the “old maid” Avid Fliss.  They are about to make love on a blanket spread on the floor of his office.  The remarkable thing about the scene I am about to quote in full is that it is at once humorous and devastatingly sad; few writers could ever achieve as much in a few hundred words.

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