I seem to remember crying at the end of Sonic Adventure 2. You know, heroic sacrifice, character finally finds meaning, etc. That, combined with "Live and Learn"... Actually, "Live and Learn" can make me cry on its own. I'm a sap.
I almost started bawling at a game last night. I finally got the magic hammer in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (I was too young to nab the game on its first run, so sue me) and I got to the guy in t he dark world with flute, and if I hadn't been dehyrated I would have cried. It was so sad... All he did was seek the Golden Power! He wasn't a bad guy! And yet he got turned into a tree... It was just so heart wrenching. I mean, forget the princess, let's save this guy from the dark world!
Then again, I cry at the drop of a hat, so perhaps I'm not a good example.
I can't believe this game hasn't come up yet. It gave me nightmares for years. It wasn't just scary--I've been known to laugh at "scary" movies. It was downright disturbing
For those of you who don't know, Parasite Eve is a 1999 Playstation Game that was developed by Squaresoft. It was based on a novel by Hideaki Sena. The premise of the game was that the mitochondria were taking over New York City by turning living creatures into monsters or lighting them on fire, and the player character, a detective who is mysteriously immune to these effects, has to stop them and the woman they chose as their avatar.
Now, maybe it's just becuase I was twelve years old when I played it, or maybe it's because the woman the mitochondria possessed (Melissa) looks vaguely like me. Maybe it's becuase as a budding actress in high school, I tried to play the game again and was disturbed by how similar Melissa's attitudes about her role in an opera were like my own jealousy and desperation in my high school acting. But something about that game gave me nightmares, and I took it much better than my stepsister, who played with me.
I still find it disturbing. I still freak out every time I get a burning sensation in my hands.
It wasn't the gore so much, or the monsters taking over New York City. It was the very premise--that a vital part of every human being, something without which we cannot live, is not only conscious in spite of us, but completely indifferent to us. The idea that something from the inside would destroy humanity--not a human being, but something that lies within the very body of every human being. As wild as the game premise is, doesn't it just reflect the nature of human experience? That is, when something is destroyed, it tends to happen from within? It's so cynical, and so dark, that to this day it frightens me.
Even very child-oriented games tend to be splattered all over with Politics. Take, for example, Pokémon.
Now, let's look at the basic format of Pokémon. You play (or with the TV adaptation, watch) a human who is a Pokémon trainer. Trainers violently catch, and train these creatures, battle them for sport, and breed and trade them at will. According to the TV show, Pokémon are intelligent.
Sound like any famous political issue to you?
And the resemblence to the slavery issue isn't the only poltiical theme in Pokémon. Note: The following paragraphs have spoilers, so if you actually plan on playing these games, care about the plot, and haven't already beaten them, turn away now.
The first Pokémon games, Red/Blue/Yellow, in addition to dealing with organized crime, also touched on government corruption. The single most evil organization in the games, ever--Team Rocket, a gang of theives--ran a casino in one of the towns, and took over a major scientific company (Silph, which was like a cross between Microsoft and Dow with a Pokémon bent) using inside operatives. But the real kicker was that the boss of Team Rocket, Giovanni, was also the most powerful gym leader--a government-sanctioned gym leader--in the region.
The second series, Gold/Silver/Crystal, also had political elements. Several gym leaders--like Falkner's and Koga's daughter (Jeanine? I think?) -- inherited their gyms from their parents. This almost seems to be a way of ridiculing the monarchy system, especially since Falkner and Koga's daughter suck (whereas Koga was difficult to beat).
But by far the most political Pokémon game I have seen is the Ruby/Sapphire series. In fact, Ruby/Sapphire seems to be a direct stab at certain political groups who are obbsessed with either animals or the environment.
Depending on which version you choose, the villain of your game is either Team Magma or Team Aqua. Both are fanatical environmental groups hellbent on something. Aqua wants to increase the water, and Magma wants to increase the world's landmass. Both resort to extremist tactics to acheive their ends, like unleashing deadly legendary Pokémon, disrupting volcanos, trying to harness Pokemon who can control the weather, etc. When I first beat the game, the phrase I used to describe Teams Aqua/Magma was "like PETA meets al Qaeda." In retrospect that isn't very accurate, but you can see where I was going.
I shudder to think where the next Pokémon game will go politically. It may tread even more dangerous ground than the stuff I write about in my Pokemon fanfics.
I live in a rural community near Bay City, MI, which was not effected by the blackout. However, my mother was out in Minnesota and insisted that I spend that two weeks with my grandmother. And that was the day Gramma decided to take us down to Flint.
For those who don't know, Flint, Michigan is somewhere between Saginaw and Detroit, and is one of the slummiest, most awful cities in Michigan.
And yet, Flint had power.
We were in transit when the blackout occurred, and were oblivious. We arrived at my grandma's old house, and I got myself a glass of water becuase it was such a hot day and plopped down in front of the TV--Flint has more cable channels than my rural home.
I saw on the news stuff about the blackout, and my thought involved some expletives. When we finally got to Local news time, I heard about the boil alert on Flint water, becuase Flint gets its water from Detroit.
-_-
So, I went two days without a shower becuase I didn't want to get the water in the numerous little cuts in my skin (I'm a pathophobe). I spent two days drinking pop becuase it was all we could find. On day three or so, Gramma and I spent a few hours on a wild goose chase to find drinking water becuase I was getting dehydrated. It's kinda funny, actually--it was the 16-year-old girl getting dehydrated, and not the 66 year old woman.
And of course, Gramma refused to go back to my home up north, where we had full power and well water.
I would later remember that one of my friends lived in New York, and later discover that one of my Canadian friends was going to attend some kind of conference in the states that weekend, but didn't becuase it was in Pennsylvania. But aside from reeking for a few days, I was prettymuch uneffected
So, I didn't get to see any city skylines in the dark. Wouldn't be a big deal to me. I'm a country geek, and where I live you only have to be maybe a quarter mile outside city limits to have a perfect view of the sky.
Though the student who ranks third in my class hooks, and is "left handed," so I suppose that would make him right handed. Besides him though, I don't know any "hookers" of the hand-usage variety, though, being in high school, I have a few classmates I might call the other kind...
I don't know if this works for people of other hand-usages, but I know what I did to improve my handwriting...
For the record, I'm a left-handed-to-ambidextrous individual, and ever since I was a child I've had trouble with handwriting--I'm infamous at my high school for it. I typically write left handed and do anything athletic right handed--the opposite of what you'd expect, as my left arm is much stronger. And I've discovered something fun...
Whenever I'm writing slowly, as long as I'm writing in big text, my right-handed handwriting is better than my left.
I can't write very fast right-handed--I'm more of a lefty than a righty, though I am technically ambidextrous. And if I try to write quickly with my right, it's more illegible than my left. But aside from some awkward numbers, my right is neater for slowly-written stuff.
And practice does make perfect. At first my right-handed handwriting looked like that of a very neat child (and I didn't start practicing with the right until about two years ago), but now, as long as I go slowly, it looks almost like my peers'.
So, you might want to try the old switcheroo. Just remember--most objects in our culture are right-handed, so you'll probably have better luck with this if you're a lefty than a righty.
I'm merely older and more experience compared to most Pokemon players I know. Most Pokemon players that I know are under 12, and I'm one of perhaps three I know who've been playing since the series' American debut. Most of my relatives and friends who play didn't pick it up until the Gold/Silver/Crystal era.
Compared to most people, no, I'm not an older, experienced gamer. I'm actually quite green. But for the vast majority of the Pokemon fandom, I'm quite long in the tooth.
Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal and Ruby/Sapphire have two internal clocks actually--one records total playtime, and the other regulates the day cycles in the game.
The berry system in either case is dictated by the Daily clock, and in all the history of Pokemon, I can't think of a single thing based on the total playtime. I think it's just there to remind kids when they've been playing too much and for bragging rights.
In fact, most of the game's timed functions are either based on the daily clock or the number of steps taken between the trigger of one event and its resolution. I remember, in the first series of games (Red/Blue/Yellow), the step number system was the only way they could keep track of time for game functions.
So the amount of gameplay is completelty irrelevant... though that other reply is right: If you give a kid a Pokemon game, they don't put it down. When I was little I played constantly--while on the toilet, while eating, while on the computer (though after a week or so of that I'd leave it alone for a month or so). And even in the last year there was an incident where I played for a total of over 80 hours over the course of six days.
And for the record, it takes a long time to truly conquer a Pokemon game. You have to spend hours outside of the main plot training for boss battles, organize all your 150+ Pokemon into neat boxes, and of course collect all 151/251/182, many of which are nearly impossible to obtain.
When I first began playing at age 11, I didn't think I'd hear that phrase either, much less from myself.
Pokemon is a mathematically complex game and, thanks to some of these "older, serious players" who have even less of a life than I do, anybody can understand the inner workings of any Pokemon game with a year or two of Algebra and a little work with probability and Hex.
That mathematical complexity and availbility makes it appeal strongly to many "nerds." It's also a veritable treasure trove of cute characters, annoying puzzles, and cheesy plot and dialogue. What's not to love?
Seriously, though, if you want to know about "older, serious players" of the game. just check out Azure Heights or my old stomping grounds, Pokemon UK. There are others, of course, but I don't remember the URL to the ones that were any good.
It seems like Nintendo is intent on breaking, Pokemon, doesn't it?
I mean, first they restrict the stat EXP system, which I felt was a jab at older, more serious players. Now, this. I had always hated the berry system of Ruby-Sapphire--I prefer the Gold/Silver/Crystal setup (Trees stay static, one berry a day). And now, this.
I mean, I know they didn't forsee it... But somehow I feel cheated. In adition to the $24.99 my mother, stepfather and I paid for each game, we're going to have to pay extra money for shipping, and that's assuming that Nintendo of America follows Nintendo of Japan's footsteps.
And I can live without the berries and stuff. But my little cousins will be devastated. There isn't a single child under 12 in my family who doesn't like Pokemon, and the group to which I'm especially close is particularly fanatical. The fact is, even if NOA does offer a patch, their mother will probably never send in their carts. Heck, the kids will probably never agree to it.
My little cousin Brett, whose birthday is in March (if I recall correctly) is not going to have a happy one, methinks.
I hope NOA handles this well. I really, really do.
It amazes me how ignorant and arrogant some slashdot readers are. Seriously, do you really think that she's going to want to learn HTML for her first website?
I did. Well, sort of. I started with basic text-formatting HTML at 12 and by 13 and 14 worked up to basic webpages and framesets. By 15 I was up to tables.
What I'm saying is, don't underestimate the girl. If I could have found an easy-to-understand tutorial on HTML, I would have used it for my first page (And by easy-to-understand, I mean easy to understand for someone with a college reading level).
But I didn't find that until I was 14. So I had to make due. But this girl, she doesn't necessarily have to. With sites like HTML Goodies, she doesn't have to resort to an editor if she really wants to learn to code.
For the record, I started with the gURLpages Basic Editor, moved up to the gURLpages advanced editor, then the angelfire advanced editor, and finally notepad. I do use Word or Geocities Pagebuilder if I'm in a hurry or feeling lazy though.
But anyway, give this kid some credit.
That's my first memory. I remember getting my swingset, I would have been three or four. Grandpa was there, I never saw him that much, so it was a big deal. My cousin Dale came too, and I remember them lifting the swingset into the yard and tying it down... I remember we lived in the downstairs flat, the guy in the upstairs apartment had a piano and we could hear it sometimes, but I don't remember hearing it, just mom explaining it to me. I remember watching Inspector Gadget in the house on Gibson Street, and I think I had a cat, but I'm not sure. I remember the entire routine for my first preschool, but I'm pretty confident that one particular memory of one particular classmate was implanted by my relatives. I remember I always brought Shark Bites to class.
One thing I remember quite clearly, which may be older than the memory of Mann Street, is my adventure's at Uncle Bob's. Dad would always take me there, and I remember always trying to get into the dryer. One time I actually did, and I tried to spin it, but to no avail. But someone found me, I don't remember who. This memory may have been implanted.
The earliest memory that I know for sure wasn't implanted was an episode of Transformers--I was four and a half or so, and I was watching what were apparently re-runs. I remembered the Cosmic Rust episode quite clearly--it was one of my friest times watching the show... I also remembered the one where Starscream takes some Decepticon criminals and forms his own faction, but my memories of the CR ep are more clear... when I described the memory to the guys in the Transfans Guild (formerly the Triumvirate, a now dormant group of which I am a triumvir), they confirmed my suspiscion that I had not begun my love of Transformers with Beast Wars.
So, use whatever data you'd like.
As for the language thing...you may be correct. I began learning basic Spanish in the end of eighth grade, and I had no formal instruction until ninth grade. I'm currently in tenth grade, and I've completed just under three semesters of instruction in Spanish. As my third semester began, I began to.. think.. in Spanish. Basic words and phrases, thank you's and apologies, began coming to me in Spanish. But my memories are untinged by the occasional Spanish thought... I do not think I could yet describe an event that happened to me as a child in Spanish except for a basic sentence or two... even if I had yet mastered the preterite. The "de nada"s and "lo siento"s that I often say and think now don't come in my memories. There may be... some truth.. to the language concept after all.
I shouldn't have assumed another slashdotter would understand me. At many schools, the cheerleader and/or athlete who is popular is a conformist. They use their cheerleading and/or athleticism to make themselves seem in the 80-115 IQ range, especially if they're much higher than that, as with my classmate with the 3.9. In some circles, the conformists are the Goths, who dress in dark clothes, read vampire novels, and blah blah blah. Still in others, they are the "geeks" with the high tech toys, the high tech vocabulary, and the tendency to bash anyone who has the audacity to accept the connotational value of stereotyping out in the open. And so on, and so forth. Take any high school stereotype, throw in a sense of superiority and a need to fit the mold of that stereotype, and you have it. BUt generally, it's the jocks/cheerleaders.
And as for convenient characters, I'm the stereotyping-young-nerd to you, am I not? I just so happen to fit a stereotype you have a bias against. Just like my friend with the 3.9 happens to be a self-oppressed near-genius jock, a stereotype that I deeply pity when it's actually accurate.
But I digress. The point is, at most schools, the jocks/cheerleaders are popular and conformist. And we don't want the little girl around whom this thread centers to become a straight-up conformist, with no respect for her own identity as anything more than part of the group. Likewise, we don't want her to reject the group completely and model herself so as to be its opposite, which is just a different way of letting them define her.
Let me put this in a way that even you will appreciate: Let's try to help this poor poster make sure that the poor child doesn't turn out like me.
I myself haven't been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, but I suspect I have a mild or borderline form of it. I was always a bright kid, but had trouble paying attention, coloring in the lines, being neat... etc. In first grade, I was picked on severely, and my response of choice was to yell, get me tested for ADHD, and my mom refused. The teacher neglected to tell mom about the harsh punishments she used and her refusal to punish seeing as I was nonviolent. My teacher pushed to those mean boys for pulling my hair.
Anyway, I've always been excessively intelligent. Tested at adult standards, my IQ is somewhere around 123 (I'm 15). I get "average" scores for my age when I take IQ tests after 24-36 hours awake. I have the ability to concentrate VERY intensely on some things, and to multitask, doing several things at a time, on others. I have trouble paying attention to lectures in school unless it's a topic I'm interested in and the lecture is on stuff I don't already know, but I effortlessly pull a 3.75 almost all the time--Usually five A's and two B's, or Six A's and a B or C.
Someone suggested earlier that you have one of your child's friends fill her in on what's supposed to be done--that's what I did. I find myself unable to listen to instructions when given by the teacher, especially if numbers are involved, but when someone shortens it to one or two sentences, I'm fine.
As for your daughter's social status, I'd monitor it closely. "weird/smart" kids either get pushed to conform almost entirely, or pushed to the other extreme. The head of my class, with a 3.9, is the former, and I am the latter. I'm spending my high school years miserable and depressed, and he's spending his childish and bored. I strongly suspect you neither want your daughter being the perky cheerleader/athlete/popular kid, nor the mewing, Pokémon-loving, highly eccentric drama geek. But there's a happy medium out there (I have an effortless-3.3 GPA friend who proves it) I'd suggest you encourage your daughter to find it.
And as for her medication... if you can find some way to remove her from it and still have her function somewhat acceptably in class and out, I'd suggest you do so. Even knowing that one can be helped by medication can lead to a dreadful debate--if I releive my sorrows with meds that are supposed to help my disease, will I lose who I am? I'm sure this doesn't come into play when she's six, but I'm fifteen and I think about it every time I consider telling my counselor how depressed I really am. So if you can keep her happy and somewhat attentive without the stimulant, do it, but don't feel like you have to.
And another tip--as with me, the stage she's in now may pass. I went from being banished to the hallway every time there was an inside recess, to a favorite of all but one of my elementary teachers, over the course of a year. If you can get your daughter to channel her innattentiveness to quieter, more "studious" distractions, teach her to be as quiet and polite as possible, and get her to ph34r the 734ch3r5, so to speak, then she might be able to do quite well, as I did. Granted, she'll be dealing with a whole crapload of issues involving authority and standing up for herself by the time she's sixteen, if she ends up like me, but it's a temporary solution.
Sorry for rambling, but I just thought I'd offer a reasonably fresh perspective on being a problem child at age six. After all, most slashdotters were six fifteen to twenty years ago; for me, it's only been a decade.... well, 9 years, 11 months, a week or two. Best of luck to you both--and if your daughter ever needs a critique of any particularly quirky Pokemon teams or strategies, well, you know who to ask for.
Now, I don't know if this is peculiar for my age, but I'm sure it's not for say, someone five years younger than me... but my gait changes DRASTICALLY with my mood, and I'm sure this is the same for children.
Perhaps the machines are built to recognize certain patterns that simple speed and/or step variations caused by mood can lead to. But I have distinct walking styles for various moods. About half the time, if I'm not in pain, I'll lift my heels several inches in the air constantly, even though I almost never wear high-heels (and when I do, they're only one to three inches). It seems to me that this would significantly change my gait, especially when contrasted with my usual dragging-of-the-feet or melodramatic happy skipping.
For reference, this can't be TOO out of the ordinary for a person of my age and gender. I'm female, and almost sixteen. We're expected to randomly swing between moods and personalities, and thus, perhaps, gaits, right?...We're not? Erm...
...is right here in the palm of your hand. If you want the ride to slide by your side, just switch it to glide."
In an episode ("The Mask of Diablo Azul") of Los Luchadores (A Y7FV kids show on Fox Kids from Winter to Fall 2001, about masked wrestlers. Specifically a mysterious superhero mexican, an incessantly rhyming speed-maniac pyro 20-something sidekick, and a bisexual pigtailed femme fetale), Turbine made a universal remote that controlled everything in the Lobotower, the residence of himself (he's the sidekick), Lobo (the superhero), Laurant (the helper), and maybe even Maria (the femme fatale). Even the car. And the remote backfired, and set off the alarm system. Woohoo! And then Turbine got possessed by the evil Luchador mask of Diablo Azul and mysteriously "worked all the bugs out of it!" and trapped Lobo and Laurant in the Lobotower (their residence).
Conclusion:
Universal remotes are the spawn of Satan, and only demons can properly make them properly.
Well, Cats and Dogs are certainly viable geek pets. Cats, outside of litterbox detail and putting out food and water, are technically low maitnence. Of course, there's the playing with cats, mainly when they're kittens, but that's fun. Also, if you get a cat, get it to love canned food enough that it goes nuts every time a can is opened. Then, get one of those catfood-sized can air fresheners. The look on my cat's face when I did that was priceless.
Also, make sure to train kitty to hop into your lap at the computer. Mine wouldn't, and missed out on a lot of cuddling and petting.
And one more thing. If you get a dog or cat and leave antifreeze out in an area where the animal has access to, you should be shot. *looks at her father* Antifreeze is a killer.
Anyway, if a cat doesn't sound right, consider a dog. Dogs are great, and loyal, but you have to play with them now and then too to really have a loveable doggie. I recommend against small dogs and any dog that is or is similiar to a poodle, unless you want a guard dog.
My dog was half miniature poodle, and she was the best guard dog, despite being tiny. She would go ballistic every time someone she didn't know came NEAR the house. She couldn't have mauled them to death or anything, as she was an ankle biter, but I'm sure she scared a few away. Besides, the last thing we needed was a lawsuit.
I've found that very good, low-maitinence pets are Sea Monkeys. Yes, they are real. No, they are not monkeys. They're small invertibrates that look like little white things. They're small, I think about the size of a staple. You feed them once a week, and you can get medicines and stuff for them... And they're obviously aquatic. I don'tk now if they're still availbible, but when they were there was a whole catologue of accessories.
But Sea Monkeys aren't cuddly.
I had a rabbit once, but it died. So no comment there.
Well, for one, "The Customer is always right." That's the way many companies operate.
Secondly, although user-friendly stuff serves a purpose for stupid people who refuse to learn more, it also has other purposes.
Firstoff, do you expect the human mind to memorize every known fact in existance? No, you don't. So how do you expect intelligent people of non-computerized vocations to understand every nook and cranny of a complicated OS with limited time and limited mental resources?
And another, do you expect a twelve year old to understand a complex OS with no "user-friendly" features when no classes or books are availbile on it in his or her area.. or at least, not at his or her age/reading level?
Well, typically that twelve year old would learn the user-friendly stuff, and then, if that twelve yera old were of the more computer-suited type, that twelve year old would go through all the menus and mess with everything they could unless they were pretty sure that their OS would get screwed up from it.
So why is User-Friendly stuff there? It's not just there for the morons. It's also for the people who're too busy or too young to be tech-saavy.
I have a little story for you. The point doesn't come until near the end, so be patient.
Just over three years ago, on December 27th of 1999, the day after her 12th birthday, Squirt got a computer.
Squirt had an IQ of 103, and loved to learn, but besides that, she was fairly normal for her age. A little more mature, maybe, but she was still a naive little kid. Most importantly, she was computer illiterate.
Squirt started up this computer (Windows 98). Squirt paid no thought to the fact that this computer had no Antivirus software. She was scarecely aware of the existence of antivirus software.
Squirt surfed away, never encountering a problem. After a few months, she discovered e-mail! She deleted Outlook Express, because she never used it. Squirt began happily e-mailing away via Alloymail, gURLmail, Boltmail, and finally Yahoo! mail.
Two and a half years later, Squirt had changed her nickname to Wolfbane and got a new computer.
Wolfbane, however, needed to transfer some old files to her new computer.
Her new computer, a Dell Dimension 8100 series, which she's still proud of to this day, had Windows ME and came with Norton Antivirus!
Wolfy put these files onto a floppy and then put that floppy in her Dell's hard drive. Some of these files were.exe's! And she scanned the files.
VIRUS FREE.
In two and a half years without an antivirus program, a teenage girl, not even in 9th grade, DIDN'T GET A SINGLE VIRUS! In fact, the closest thing she got was a prank page that said "You have a virus" via a javascript alert box to EVERY VISITOR TO THE PAGE.
And this child, though naive and originally computer illiterate, had the IQ of an average adult, give or take ten points at first, more later (IN fact, at her three year anniversary of being a windows user, her IQ was 124, and is currently 126!).
The lesson? Antivirus software isn't as necessary as these companies claim. Stuff isn't as vulnerable as they claim. But since idiots think it is, and idiots are most likely to succumb to virii... go figure.
Of course, this child, who currently goes by watashiwananashidesu at/., is very grateful that she has Norton on her precious Dell. Why? Her semi-computer-literate mom, and her mom's computer-illiterate fiance, and that fiance's e-mail-forward-perpetuating, half-computer-literate daughter all use her beloved Dell. And when she tries to explain stuff, they get confused. So she doesn't know if they're competant enough to avoid suspiscious e-mails... she does know that none of them have discovered Outlook yet. XD
So, antivirus stuff and propaganda aren't completely useless, and I feel a lot safer with Norton. But the idea of Proof of Concept viruses make me mad, when marketed as REAL threats. Don't post it like it's a wild threat if it ISN'T!
Serious, I scoured the Norton and McAfree or whatever sights for signs of a CURRENT threat from this JPG stuff, and couldn't find one. Yet it was promoted like it was a current problem, when actually it's just an idea that might come into play a month or two down the road.
... I really hate it when people make something look like something else for a quick buck.
I just hope my mom, uncle, and aunt don't see those articles.. @_@
Welding glasses my tailpipe...
on
Crescent Sunset
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· Score: 2, Funny
I stare at the sun every now and then, and even though I'm nearsighted and have mild problems with some colors, I can still see. What's staring at one during an eclipse for a few seconds going to hurt? I'll just see spots for a few minutes...
And yes, I KNOW I'm being stupid. But it'd be nice if someone could show me just why.
I suppose in a few thousand years, media sources will be talking about what many influential people from our time were on.
Like those 900-number Tarot reading Jamaicans. You know who I'm talking about.
Of course, in the future, they won't have the tapes of the smoke rolling up behind her as their proof.
In addition to the very famous peeps, the company also produces marshmallow bunnies. The bunnies are pretty much the same, but shaped like two-dimensional rabbits. Also, I believe the bunnies are usually pink and lack the color variety that peeps have.
Within my own family, it seems that my relatives prefer marshmallow bunnies. I usually like marshmallow peeps better; three dimensional foods are more appealing to me. However, I've yet to put one in the microwave... but as soon as mom buys some...
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to remember crying at the end of Sonic Adventure 2. You know, heroic sacrifice, character finally finds meaning, etc. That, combined with "Live and Learn"... Actually, "Live and Learn" can make me cry on its own. I'm a sap.
I almost started bawling at a game last night. I finally got the magic hammer in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (I was too young to nab the game on its first run, so sue me) and I got to the guy in t he dark world with flute, and if I hadn't been dehyrated I would have cried. It was so sad... All he did was seek the Golden Power! He wasn't a bad guy! And yet he got turned into a tree... It was just so heart wrenching. I mean, forget the princess, let's save this guy from the dark world!
Then again, I cry at the drop of a hat, so perhaps I'm not a good example.
I can't believe this game hasn't come up yet. It gave me nightmares for years. It wasn't just scary--I've been known to laugh at "scary" movies. It was downright disturbing
For those of you who don't know, Parasite Eve is a 1999 Playstation Game that was developed by Squaresoft. It was based on a novel by Hideaki Sena. The premise of the game was that the mitochondria were taking over New York City by turning living creatures into monsters or lighting them on fire, and the player character, a detective who is mysteriously immune to these effects, has to stop them and the woman they chose as their avatar.
Now, maybe it's just becuase I was twelve years old when I played it, or maybe it's because the woman the mitochondria possessed (Melissa) looks vaguely like me. Maybe it's becuase as a budding actress in high school, I tried to play the game again and was disturbed by how similar Melissa's attitudes about her role in an opera were like my own jealousy and desperation in my high school acting. But something about that game gave me nightmares, and I took it much better than my stepsister, who played with me.
I still find it disturbing. I still freak out every time I get a burning sensation in my hands.
It wasn't the gore so much, or the monsters taking over New York City. It was the very premise--that a vital part of every human being, something without which we cannot live, is not only conscious in spite of us, but completely indifferent to us. The idea that something from the inside would destroy humanity--not a human being, but something that lies within the very body of every human being. As wild as the game premise is, doesn't it just reflect the nature of human experience? That is, when something is destroyed, it tends to happen from within? It's so cynical, and so dark, that to this day it frightens me.
Hi Morpheus.
Even very child-oriented games tend to be splattered all over with Politics. Take, for example, Pokémon.
Now, let's look at the basic format of Pokémon. You play (or with the TV adaptation, watch) a human who is a Pokémon trainer. Trainers violently catch, and train these creatures, battle them for sport, and breed and trade them at will. According to the TV show, Pokémon are intelligent.
Sound like any famous political issue to you?
And the resemblence to the slavery issue isn't the only poltiical theme in Pokémon. Note: The following paragraphs have spoilers, so if you actually plan on playing these games, care about the plot, and haven't already beaten them, turn away now.
The first Pokémon games, Red/Blue/Yellow, in addition to dealing with organized crime, also touched on government corruption. The single most evil organization in the games, ever--Team Rocket, a gang of theives--ran a casino in one of the towns, and took over a major scientific company (Silph, which was like a cross between Microsoft and Dow with a Pokémon bent) using inside operatives. But the real kicker was that the boss of Team Rocket, Giovanni, was also the most powerful gym leader--a government-sanctioned gym leader--in the region.
The second series, Gold/Silver/Crystal, also had political elements. Several gym leaders--like Falkner's and Koga's daughter (Jeanine? I think?) -- inherited their gyms from their parents. This almost seems to be a way of ridiculing the monarchy system, especially since Falkner and Koga's daughter suck (whereas Koga was difficult to beat).
But by far the most political Pokémon game I have seen is the Ruby/Sapphire series. In fact, Ruby/Sapphire seems to be a direct stab at certain political groups who are obbsessed with either animals or the environment.
Depending on which version you choose, the villain of your game is either Team Magma or Team Aqua. Both are fanatical environmental groups hellbent on something. Aqua wants to increase the water, and Magma wants to increase the world's landmass. Both resort to extremist tactics to acheive their ends, like unleashing deadly legendary Pokémon, disrupting volcanos, trying to harness Pokemon who can control the weather, etc. When I first beat the game, the phrase I used to describe Teams Aqua/Magma was "like PETA meets al Qaeda." In retrospect that isn't very accurate, but you can see where I was going.
I shudder to think where the next Pokémon game will go politically. It may tread even more dangerous ground than the stuff I write about in my Pokemon fanfics.
I live in a rural community near Bay City, MI, which was not effected by the blackout. However, my mother was out in Minnesota and insisted that I spend that two weeks with my grandmother. And that was the day Gramma decided to take us down to Flint.
For those who don't know, Flint, Michigan is somewhere between Saginaw and Detroit, and is one of the slummiest, most awful cities in Michigan.
And yet, Flint had power.
We were in transit when the blackout occurred, and were oblivious. We arrived at my grandma's old house, and I got myself a glass of water becuase it was such a hot day and plopped down in front of the TV--Flint has more cable channels than my rural home.
I saw on the news stuff about the blackout, and my thought involved some expletives. When we finally got to Local news time, I heard about the boil alert on Flint water, becuase Flint gets its water from Detroit.
-_-
So, I went two days without a shower becuase I didn't want to get the water in the numerous little cuts in my skin (I'm a pathophobe). I spent two days drinking pop becuase it was all we could find. On day three or so, Gramma and I spent a few hours on a wild goose chase to find drinking water becuase I was getting dehydrated. It's kinda funny, actually--it was the 16-year-old girl getting dehydrated, and not the 66 year old woman.
And of course, Gramma refused to go back to my home up north, where we had full power and well water.
I would later remember that one of my friends lived in New York, and later discover that one of my Canadian friends was going to attend some kind of conference in the states that weekend, but didn't becuase it was in Pennsylvania. But aside from reeking for a few days, I was prettymuch uneffected
So, I didn't get to see any city skylines in the dark. Wouldn't be a big deal to me. I'm a country geek, and where I live you only have to be maybe a quarter mile outside city limits to have a perfect view of the sky.
For the record, I don't hook with either hand.
Though the student who ranks third in my class hooks, and is "left handed," so I suppose that would make him right handed. Besides him though, I don't know any "hookers" of the hand-usage variety, though, being in high school, I have a few classmates I might call the other kind...
I don't know if this works for people of other hand-usages, but I know what I did to improve my handwriting...
For the record, I'm a left-handed-to-ambidextrous individual, and ever since I was a child I've had trouble with handwriting--I'm infamous at my high school for it. I typically write left handed and do anything athletic right handed--the opposite of what you'd expect, as my left arm is much stronger. And I've discovered something fun...
Whenever I'm writing slowly, as long as I'm writing in big text, my right-handed handwriting is better than my left.
I can't write very fast right-handed--I'm more of a lefty than a righty, though I am technically ambidextrous. And if I try to write quickly with my right, it's more illegible than my left. But aside from some awkward numbers, my right is neater for slowly-written stuff.
And practice does make perfect. At first my right-handed handwriting looked like that of a very neat child (and I didn't start practicing with the right until about two years ago), but now, as long as I go slowly, it looks almost like my peers'.
So, you might want to try the old switcheroo. Just remember--most objects in our culture are right-handed, so you'll probably have better luck with this if you're a lefty than a righty.
I'm merely older and more experience compared to most Pokemon players I know. Most Pokemon players that I know are under 12, and I'm one of perhaps three I know who've been playing since the series' American debut. Most of my relatives and friends who play didn't pick it up until the Gold/Silver/Crystal era.
Compared to most people, no, I'm not an older, experienced gamer. I'm actually quite green. But for the vast majority of the Pokemon fandom, I'm quite long in the tooth.
Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal and Ruby/Sapphire have two internal clocks actually--one records total playtime, and the other regulates the day cycles in the game.
The berry system in either case is dictated by the Daily clock, and in all the history of Pokemon, I can't think of a single thing based on the total playtime. I think it's just there to remind kids when they've been playing too much and for bragging rights.
In fact, most of the game's timed functions are either based on the daily clock or the number of steps taken between the trigger of one event and its resolution. I remember, in the first series of games (Red/Blue/Yellow), the step number system was the only way they could keep track of time for game functions.
So the amount of gameplay is completelty irrelevant... though that other reply is right: If you give a kid a Pokemon game, they don't put it down. When I was little I played constantly--while on the toilet, while eating, while on the computer (though after a week or so of that I'd leave it alone for a month or so). And even in the last year there was an incident where I played for a total of over 80 hours over the course of six days.
And for the record, it takes a long time to truly conquer a Pokemon game. You have to spend hours outside of the main plot training for boss battles, organize all your 150+ Pokemon into neat boxes, and of course collect all 151/251/182, many of which are nearly impossible to obtain.
When I first began playing at age 11, I didn't think I'd hear that phrase either, much less from myself.
Pokemon is a mathematically complex game and, thanks to some of these "older, serious players" who have even less of a life than I do, anybody can understand the inner workings of any Pokemon game with a year or two of Algebra and a little work with probability and Hex.
That mathematical complexity and availbility makes it appeal strongly to many "nerds." It's also a veritable treasure trove of cute characters, annoying puzzles, and cheesy plot and dialogue. What's not to love?
Seriously, though, if you want to know about "older, serious players" of the game. just check out Azure Heights or my old stomping grounds, Pokemon UK. There are others, of course, but I don't remember the URL to the ones that were any good.
It seems like Nintendo is intent on breaking, Pokemon, doesn't it?
I mean, first they restrict the stat EXP system, which I felt was a jab at older, more serious players. Now, this. I had always hated the berry system of Ruby-Sapphire--I prefer the Gold/Silver/Crystal setup (Trees stay static, one berry a day). And now, this.
I mean, I know they didn't forsee it... But somehow I feel cheated. In adition to the $24.99 my mother, stepfather and I paid for each game, we're going to have to pay extra money for shipping, and that's assuming that Nintendo of America follows Nintendo of Japan's footsteps.
And I can live without the berries and stuff. But my little cousins will be devastated. There isn't a single child under 12 in my family who doesn't like Pokemon, and the group to which I'm especially close is particularly fanatical. The fact is, even if NOA does offer a patch, their mother will probably never send in their carts. Heck, the kids will probably never agree to it.
My little cousin Brett, whose birthday is in March (if I recall correctly) is not going to have a happy one, methinks.
I hope NOA handles this well. I really, really do.
It amazes me how ignorant and arrogant some slashdot readers are. Seriously, do you really think that she's going to want to learn HTML for her first website? I did. Well, sort of. I started with basic text-formatting HTML at 12 and by 13 and 14 worked up to basic webpages and framesets. By 15 I was up to tables. What I'm saying is, don't underestimate the girl. If I could have found an easy-to-understand tutorial on HTML, I would have used it for my first page (And by easy-to-understand, I mean easy to understand for someone with a college reading level). But I didn't find that until I was 14. So I had to make due. But this girl, she doesn't necessarily have to. With sites like HTML Goodies, she doesn't have to resort to an editor if she really wants to learn to code. For the record, I started with the gURLpages Basic Editor, moved up to the gURLpages advanced editor, then the angelfire advanced editor, and finally notepad. I do use Word or Geocities Pagebuilder if I'm in a hurry or feeling lazy though. But anyway, give this kid some credit.
That's my first memory. I remember getting my swingset, I would have been three or four. Grandpa was there, I never saw him that much, so it was a big deal. My cousin Dale came too, and I remember them lifting the swingset into the yard and tying it down... I remember we lived in the downstairs flat, the guy in the upstairs apartment had a piano and we could hear it sometimes, but I don't remember hearing it, just mom explaining it to me. I remember watching Inspector Gadget in the house on Gibson Street, and I think I had a cat, but I'm not sure. I remember the entire routine for my first preschool, but I'm pretty confident that one particular memory of one particular classmate was implanted by my relatives. I remember I always brought Shark Bites to class.
One thing I remember quite clearly, which may be older than the memory of Mann Street, is my adventure's at Uncle Bob's. Dad would always take me there, and I remember always trying to get into the dryer. One time I actually did, and I tried to spin it, but to no avail. But someone found me, I don't remember who. This memory may have been implanted.
The earliest memory that I know for sure wasn't implanted was an episode of Transformers--I was four and a half or so, and I was watching what were apparently re-runs. I remembered the Cosmic Rust episode quite clearly--it was one of my friest times watching the show... I also remembered the one where Starscream takes some Decepticon criminals and forms his own faction, but my memories of the CR ep are more clear... when I described the memory to the guys in the Transfans Guild (formerly the Triumvirate, a now dormant group of which I am a triumvir), they confirmed my suspiscion that I had not begun my love of Transformers with Beast Wars.
So, use whatever data you'd like.
As for the language thing...you may be correct. I began learning basic Spanish in the end of eighth grade, and I had no formal instruction until ninth grade. I'm currently in tenth grade, and I've completed just under three semesters of instruction in Spanish. As my third semester began, I began to.. think.. in Spanish. Basic words and phrases, thank you's and apologies, began coming to me in Spanish. But my memories are untinged by the occasional Spanish thought... I do not think I could yet describe an event that happened to me as a child in Spanish except for a basic sentence or two... even if I had yet mastered the preterite. The "de nada"s and "lo siento"s that I often say and think now don't come in my memories. There may be... some truth.. to the language concept after all.
I shouldn't have assumed another slashdotter would understand me. At many schools, the cheerleader and/or athlete who is popular is a conformist. They use their cheerleading and/or athleticism to make themselves seem in the 80-115 IQ range, especially if they're much higher than that, as with my classmate with the 3.9. In some circles, the conformists are the Goths, who dress in dark clothes, read vampire novels, and blah blah blah. Still in others, they are the "geeks" with the high tech toys, the high tech vocabulary, and the tendency to bash anyone who has the audacity to accept the connotational value of stereotyping out in the open. And so on, and so forth. Take any high school stereotype, throw in a sense of superiority and a need to fit the mold of that stereotype, and you have it. BUt generally, it's the jocks/cheerleaders. And as for convenient characters, I'm the stereotyping-young-nerd to you, am I not? I just so happen to fit a stereotype you have a bias against. Just like my friend with the 3.9 happens to be a self-oppressed near-genius jock, a stereotype that I deeply pity when it's actually accurate. But I digress. The point is, at most schools, the jocks/cheerleaders are popular and conformist. And we don't want the little girl around whom this thread centers to become a straight-up conformist, with no respect for her own identity as anything more than part of the group. Likewise, we don't want her to reject the group completely and model herself so as to be its opposite, which is just a different way of letting them define her. Let me put this in a way that even you will appreciate: Let's try to help this poor poster make sure that the poor child doesn't turn out like me.
I myself haven't been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, but I suspect I have a mild or borderline form of it. I was always a bright kid, but had trouble paying attention, coloring in the lines, being neat... etc. In first grade, I was picked on severely, and my response of choice was to yell, get me tested for ADHD, and my mom refused. The teacher neglected to tell mom about the harsh punishments she used and her refusal to punish seeing as I was nonviolent. My teacher pushed to those mean boys for pulling my hair.
Anyway, I've always been excessively intelligent. Tested at adult standards, my IQ is somewhere around 123 (I'm 15). I get "average" scores for my age when I take IQ tests after 24-36 hours awake. I have the ability to concentrate VERY intensely on some things, and to multitask, doing several things at a time, on others. I have trouble paying attention to lectures in school unless it's a topic I'm interested in and the lecture is on stuff I don't already know, but I effortlessly pull a 3.75 almost all the time--Usually five A's and two B's, or Six A's and a B or C.
Someone suggested earlier that you have one of your child's friends fill her in on what's supposed to be done--that's what I did. I find myself unable to listen to instructions when given by the teacher, especially if numbers are involved, but when someone shortens it to one or two sentences, I'm fine.
As for your daughter's social status, I'd monitor it closely. "weird/smart" kids either get pushed to conform almost entirely, or pushed to the other extreme. The head of my class, with a 3.9, is the former, and I am the latter. I'm spending my high school years miserable and depressed, and he's spending his childish and bored. I strongly suspect you neither want your daughter being the perky cheerleader/athlete/popular kid, nor the mewing, Pokémon-loving, highly eccentric drama geek. But there's a happy medium out there (I have an effortless-3.3 GPA friend who proves it) I'd suggest you encourage your daughter to find it.
And as for her medication... if you can find some way to remove her from it and still have her function somewhat acceptably in class and out, I'd suggest you do so. Even knowing that one can be helped by medication can lead to a dreadful debate--if I releive my sorrows with meds that are supposed to help my disease, will I lose who I am? I'm sure this doesn't come into play when she's six, but I'm fifteen and I think about it every time I consider telling my counselor how depressed I really am. So if you can keep her happy and somewhat attentive without the stimulant, do it, but don't feel like you have to.
And another tip--as with me, the stage she's in now may pass. I went from being banished to the hallway every time there was an inside recess, to a favorite of all but one of my elementary teachers, over the course of a year. If you can get your daughter to channel her innattentiveness to quieter, more "studious" distractions, teach her to be as quiet and polite as possible, and get her to ph34r the 734ch3r5, so to speak, then she might be able to do quite well, as I did. Granted, she'll be dealing with a whole crapload of issues involving authority and standing up for herself by the time she's sixteen, if she ends up like me, but it's a temporary solution.
Sorry for rambling, but I just thought I'd offer a reasonably fresh perspective on being a problem child at age six. After all, most slashdotters were six fifteen to twenty years ago; for me, it's only been a decade.... well, 9 years, 11 months, a week or two. Best of luck to you both--and if your daughter ever needs a critique of any particularly quirky Pokemon teams or strategies, well, you know who to ask for.
Now, I don't know if this is peculiar for my age, but I'm sure it's not for say, someone five years younger than me... but my gait changes DRASTICALLY with my mood, and I'm sure this is the same for children.
...We're not? Erm...
Perhaps the machines are built to recognize certain patterns that simple speed and/or step variations caused by mood can lead to. But I have distinct walking styles for various moods. About half the time, if I'm not in pain, I'll lift my heels several inches in the air constantly, even though I almost never wear high-heels (and when I do, they're only one to three inches). It seems to me that this would significantly change my gait, especially when contrasted with my usual dragging-of-the-feet or melodramatic happy skipping.
For reference, this can't be TOO out of the ordinary for a person of my age and gender. I'm female, and almost sixteen. We're expected to randomly swing between moods and personalities, and thus, perhaps, gaits, right?
...is right here in the palm of your hand. If you want the ride to slide by your side, just switch it to glide."
In an episode ("The Mask of Diablo Azul") of Los Luchadores (A Y7FV kids show on Fox Kids from Winter to Fall 2001, about masked wrestlers. Specifically a mysterious superhero mexican, an incessantly rhyming speed-maniac pyro 20-something sidekick, and a bisexual pigtailed femme fetale), Turbine made a universal remote that controlled everything in the Lobotower, the residence of himself (he's the sidekick), Lobo (the superhero), Laurant (the helper), and maybe even Maria (the femme fatale). Even the car. And the remote backfired, and set off the alarm system. Woohoo! And then Turbine got possessed by the evil Luchador mask of Diablo Azul and mysteriously "worked all the bugs out of it!" and trapped Lobo and Laurant in the Lobotower (their residence).
Conclusion:
Universal remotes are the spawn of Satan, and only demons can properly make them properly.
Well, Cats and Dogs are certainly viable geek pets. Cats, outside of litterbox detail and putting out food and water, are technically low maitnence. Of course, there's the playing with cats, mainly when they're kittens, but that's fun. Also, if you get a cat, get it to love canned food enough that it goes nuts every time a can is opened. Then, get one of those catfood-sized can air fresheners. The look on my cat's face when I did that was priceless.
Also, make sure to train kitty to hop into your lap at the computer. Mine wouldn't, and missed out on a lot of cuddling and petting.
And one more thing. If you get a dog or cat and leave antifreeze out in an area where the animal has access to, you should be shot. *looks at her father* Antifreeze is a killer.
Anyway, if a cat doesn't sound right, consider a dog. Dogs are great, and loyal, but you have to play with them now and then too to really have a loveable doggie. I recommend against small dogs and any dog that is or is similiar to a poodle, unless you want a guard dog.
My dog was half miniature poodle, and she was the best guard dog, despite being tiny. She would go ballistic every time someone she didn't know came NEAR the house. She couldn't have mauled them to death or anything, as she was an ankle biter, but I'm sure she scared a few away. Besides, the last thing we needed was a lawsuit.
I've found that very good, low-maitinence pets are Sea Monkeys. Yes, they are real. No, they are not monkeys. They're small invertibrates that look like little white things. They're small, I think about the size of a staple. You feed them once a week, and you can get medicines and stuff for them... And they're obviously aquatic. I don'tk now if they're still availbible, but when they were there was a whole catologue of accessories.
But Sea Monkeys aren't cuddly.
I had a rabbit once, but it died. So no comment there.
So, have fun.
Well, for one, "The Customer is always right." That's the way many companies operate.
Secondly, although user-friendly stuff serves a purpose for stupid people who refuse to learn more, it also has other purposes.
Firstoff, do you expect the human mind to memorize every known fact in existance? No, you don't. So how do you expect intelligent people of non-computerized vocations to understand every nook and cranny of a complicated OS with limited time and limited mental resources?
And another, do you expect a twelve year old to understand a complex OS with no "user-friendly" features when no classes or books are availbile on it in his or her area.. or at least, not at his or her age/reading level?
Well, typically that twelve year old would learn the user-friendly stuff, and then, if that twelve yera old were of the more computer-suited type, that twelve year old would go through all the menus and mess with everything they could unless they were pretty sure that their OS would get screwed up from it.
So why is User-Friendly stuff there? It's not just there for the morons. It's also for the people who're too busy or too young to be tech-saavy.
I have a little story for you. The point doesn't come until near the end, so be patient.
.exe's! And she scanned the files.
/., is very grateful that she has Norton on her precious Dell. Why? Her semi-computer-literate mom, and her mom's computer-illiterate fiance, and that fiance's e-mail-forward-perpetuating, half-computer-literate daughter all use her beloved Dell. And when she tries to explain stuff, they get confused. So she doesn't know if they're competant enough to avoid suspiscious e-mails... she does know that none of them have discovered Outlook yet. XD
... I really hate it when people make something look like something else for a quick buck.
Just over three years ago, on December 27th of 1999, the day after her 12th birthday, Squirt got a computer.
Squirt had an IQ of 103, and loved to learn, but besides that, she was fairly normal for her age. A little more mature, maybe, but she was still a naive little kid. Most importantly, she was computer illiterate.
Squirt started up this computer (Windows 98). Squirt paid no thought to the fact that this computer had no Antivirus software. She was scarecely aware of the existence of antivirus software.
Squirt surfed away, never encountering a problem. After a few months, she discovered e-mail! She deleted Outlook Express, because she never used it. Squirt began happily e-mailing away via Alloymail, gURLmail, Boltmail, and finally Yahoo! mail.
Two and a half years later, Squirt had changed her nickname to Wolfbane and got a new computer.
Wolfbane, however, needed to transfer some old files to her new computer.
Her new computer, a Dell Dimension 8100 series, which she's still proud of to this day, had Windows ME and came with Norton Antivirus!
Wolfy put these files onto a floppy and then put that floppy in her Dell's hard drive. Some of these files were
VIRUS FREE.
In two and a half years without an antivirus program, a teenage girl, not even in 9th grade, DIDN'T GET A SINGLE VIRUS! In fact, the closest thing she got was a prank page that said "You have a virus" via a javascript alert box to EVERY VISITOR TO THE PAGE.
And this child, though naive and originally computer illiterate, had the IQ of an average adult, give or take ten points at first, more later (IN fact, at her three year anniversary of being a windows user, her IQ was 124, and is currently 126!).
The lesson? Antivirus software isn't as necessary as these companies claim. Stuff isn't as vulnerable as they claim. But since idiots think it is, and idiots are most likely to succumb to virii... go figure.
Of course, this child, who currently goes by watashiwananashidesu at
So, antivirus stuff and propaganda aren't completely useless, and I feel a lot safer with Norton. But the idea of Proof of Concept viruses make me mad, when marketed as REAL threats. Don't post it like it's a wild threat if it ISN'T!
Serious, I scoured the Norton and McAfree or whatever sights for signs of a CURRENT threat from this JPG stuff, and couldn't find one. Yet it was promoted like it was a current problem, when actually it's just an idea that might come into play a month or two down the road.
I just hope my mom, uncle, and aunt don't see those articles.. @_@
I stare at the sun every now and then, and even though I'm nearsighted and have mild problems with some colors, I can still see. What's staring at one during an eclipse for a few seconds going to hurt? I'll just see spots for a few minutes...
And yes, I KNOW I'm being stupid. But it'd be nice if someone could show me just why.
Six years ago, one of my little cousins referred to all chicken as "Bawk Bawk".
*...imagines her cousin's future, twenty-thirty years from now...*
"Dada, can me have Bald Bald?"
So... ten years from now, is it going to be "Carbon Valley?"
That just doesn' thave the same ring to it ya know?
I suppose in a few thousand years, media sources will be talking about what many influential people from our time were on. Like those 900-number Tarot reading Jamaicans. You know who I'm talking about. Of course, in the future, they won't have the tapes of the smoke rolling up behind her as their proof.
In addition to the very famous peeps, the company also produces marshmallow bunnies. The bunnies are pretty much the same, but shaped like two-dimensional rabbits. Also, I believe the bunnies are usually pink and lack the color variety that peeps have.
Within my own family, it seems that my relatives prefer marshmallow bunnies. I usually like marshmallow peeps better; three dimensional foods are more appealing to me. However, I've yet to put one in the microwave... but as soon as mom buys some...