Con-plimentary

I make no bones about the fact that I’m pretty geeky, so I’m generally aware of my deficiencies in most of the social graces. No idea why, but yesterday, it suddenly occurred to me that I don’t know how to take a compliment. For example, somebody says to me “hey man, that’s a nice jacket”, my response would be along the lines of “um, yeah… thanks”. It’s a real conversation killer, and could be one of the reasons why I find the experience of talking or socialising with other people such an awkward experience.

Should I have returned the compliment – “thanks mate, you’re looking pretty sharp yourself”, or downplayed it with “nah, I just threw it on this morning ‘coz it was cold”?

Is it possible to learn this in a systematic fashion to compensate for not having acquired it by osmosis during the last 32 years?

How time flies

This Penny Arcade comic made me feel kinda sad, reason being, after spending an inordinate amount of time getting every single coin in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, I’m playing Super Mario Galaxy again after discovering that having achieved 120 stars with Mario, doing it all over again with Luigi will earn me the opportunity to play a secret 121st level. Then on the PC, I’m playing through Prince of Persia a second time even though I recently finished it. My excuse is that I wanted to give my new graphics card a good run, but really, I’m trying to collect all 900 “light seeds” to unlock bonus material (character costumes).

I always feel guilty for not making better use of my time – what exactly have I achieved in my obsessive-compulsive pursuit of the above goals? Was I truly more entertained in having achieved everything, or am I only doing it so that I can brag about it on Facebook? Instead, I could / should be writing, increasing my proficiency in cello/violin/piano through practise, learning the skills required to turn my ideas into reality, etc. It may just be that gaming creates the delusion of achieving something because of its interactive nature.

I never wanted us to be one of those couples that do nothing but sit and watch TV every night. Yet by denying myself, I end up sitting around angsting over what to do instead – and achieving just as little – probably less – than if I’d just let myself watch Top Gear or something. (On the other hand, Jenny’s perfectly fine because she’s busy studying for her Master of Counselling degree.)

Let me put the question out there: what do you do to pass the time, and do you ever feel the need to justify it?

Reading between the lines

Jenny absolutely loves movies. Me, I don’t care much for them, reason being that the plots inevitably hang one or more of the characters doing something stupid. We borrowed a couple DVDs recently – The Descent, which featured a group of girls being as irritating as possible and making irrational decisions at every turn so that their friendship dissolves into bitter enmity; and The Reader in which a character allows herself to be incarcerated for life because she’s too ashamed to reveal that she’s illiterate.

While The Descent did nothing to improve the thriller/horror genre’s standing in my books, I did find myself being somewhat affected by The Reader (and not because Kate Winslet is naked in half of her on-screen appearances). There’s a lot of tension as Michael Berg (played by David Kross) grapples with his conscience as to whether he should keep silent and see his unrequited love go to jail, or speak up against her wishes and shame her in front of the court (and presumably, country). While Jenny was weeping by the end of the movie, the whole time I was going “is it really worth being sentenced to prison for life, just to hide the fact that you can’t read and write?” while secretly choking back a tear.

This probably reveals just how much of a geek I am, which is to say completely out of touch with my emotions (feelings that can’t be expressed with an emoticon don’t exist :-P) – but maybe like the cliché about the speck of grit being the source of great beauty, flaws are necessary for the telling of great stories, and it’s only by allowing yourself to ignore these flaws that one can connect emotionally. I blame my inability to appreciate this on being exposed to too much awesome.

So where does that leave The Descent? The oyster must’ve gotten a mouthful of dirt, choked and died.