Live and Direct

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

GTA

Since Sara went back to Seattle, I've realized I drastically overestimated the amount of work left for me to take care of here in Denmark. The exam grading is going along smoothly, and aside from a few more papers, an oral defense, and a meeting with a student, I pretty much have no more teaching responsibilities. I've started boxing things up in the apartment, and since the actual move takes place on the 30th, I'm at the stage where everything left to box up is also stuff I need to live for a couple more weeks. Which leaves me with a fair amount of free time.

I've been living up to my true character by sitting on the couch playing _Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas_ for days at a time. It's not a pretty sight. I only bathe if I have to come to campus and I shaved for the first time in days this morning, again because I had to come to campus. It's a good thing I'm leaving soon, or I think I would become a serious shut in.

But on a bright note, in the game world, where I'm a fierce and quite debonair gangster, things are coming along swimmingly. I've taken over most of the immediate neighborhoods from my gang rivals after realizing I could take over a neighborhood by just walking down a street, provoking a gun battle, and then killing everything that comes running at me. I've started investing in real estate with my brutally gotten gains. My strength statistic is peaked out and my avatar looks really buff, which oddly makes me feel a lot better about sitting on the couch for twelve hours straight. Also, I've started a relationship with a new girl, Denise, and things seem to be going well. Granted, she tends to shoot randomly out the window when we go out together, but I think it's just a mark of a bad childhood. I'm sure my love can cure what ails her. We've gotten to the stage in our relationship where she's been inviting me in for "hot coffee" at the end of our dates.

I have to say, given the way the console version keeps the camera outside the house while a soundtrack of moaning, etc., plays, the whole thing seems a bit silly. I mean, if this were an R rated movie, the equivalent of a videogame M rating, we would at least follow the characters indoors and see them kiss (and probably a lot more) before the big fadeout. I'm not suggesting I actually want to play the Hot Coffee mini-game, which just seems tedious to me, but the weird doublestandard seems indicative of videogames' relative position in media culture.

Given this recent antisocial behavior, I may have to ask all of my Seattle friends to make a concerted effort to get me out of the house every once in a while once I start my book research, which will consist to a great degree of me sitting on the couch playing videogames and watching movies. Maybe I'll grow a beard.

1 Comments:

  • Well, given my ancestry, it wouldn't be much of a beard anyway, so maybe I'll leave it out. Mostly, though, I can't wait to get back to Seattle.

    By Blogger L&D, at 11:31 PM  

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