... but I stopped. Now I'm a dad, and may blog again...

Monday, October 10, 2011

417: A Waste of Time

It worries me more than a little that my first self-imposed novel-writing deadline is looming (31st October to finish three chapters and a treatment), and I seem to have lost all my initial enthusiasm for the project. Don't get me wrong, I still fully intend to do it, but spend all my time either worrying about money, fretting about life, ignoring reality with books and radio and TV, etc. When I do decide it's time for some writing I inevitably have to catch up on the blog first, and once that's done it's time for another nap, TV show, or sleep. See, reading is as essential to the writer as writing its self is, so I have been reading Ian Fleming's Bond novels in order to get an understanding of how strong plot driven narrative works. The problem is that they are so good that I can't sleep, and as soon as I finish one I pick up the next. When I am not reading them I want to watch spy movies and play spy games. With that in mind I have bought the Bourne trilogy DVD and downloaded an N64 emulator and 007 GoldenEye rom... fortunately I've just discovered it's pretty hard to play using the keyboard, without finding out what all the keys do. How do I strafe, for god's sake!?

The N64 was fantastic – how I miss my home made characters from WWF No Mercy, the finest wrestling simulation game ever created. By a long long stretch. Myself and two friends each created our own characters, and engaged in hour long triple-threat Iron Man matches for the World Heavyweight Championship. Then when one of us was eventually victorious, with a likely final score of 32-30-29 or similar, we would start again. Except this time it would be a one-on-one Iron Man match, with the loser of the previous match playing as the referee in this one. This was ten years ago, when I should have been working or studying. Instead I was smashing pixelated tables and hitting my friends avatars in the face with imaginary sledge hammers. But, I did, on more than one occassion hold the World Heavyweight Championship, so that's some achievement.

These days I have long since sold the last of my consoles (I have over the course of my life owned a Master System, Mega Drive, N64, Sega Dreamcast (which I won in a TV competition), and an X-Box) and have yet to enter the market for one of the latest generation consoles. How I yearn to get my clammy little thumbs onto my very own X-Box 360; oh, the time I could waste with one of those magical creations. There are hundreds of hours of my life that I have yet to waste playing GTA4 or any of the other games that I've not even heard of but would love. Have they made a new Hitman or Splinter Cell game yet? Probably best if I don't know.

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