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E3 is over

It’s been a crazy couple of days. See why in the 16punches galleries here.

I’m super swagged and super excited to play some of these games when they are released later this year. The big deal of the show was definitely Nintendo’s Wii. The line to get in to the Wii area looped around for as far as the eye could see. I heard it was a 6 hour wait. I gave up. I really really wanted to try it out but not at the expense of missing the rest of the show. Last year Microsoft was giving out tickets to get in to try out the Xbox 360 – this should be the way exhibitors handle the lines. It doesn’t do anybody any good to stand in line for hours. Even Nintendo suffers: no one in that line gets to try the new DS titles, the DS lite, the Brain Game… what a bummer.

E3 Begins

Today’s the day. In 15 minutes the doors to E3 2006 will open and geeks galore will rush in to see the latest releases from their favourite game companies. My first stop is Blizzard to see what’s new with World of Warcraft. I’ll also be on the lookout for boothbabes as a follow up to this thread running on Muse and Fury. There’s been a lot of discussion this year leading up to E3 about the fines for scantily clad boot babes so I’m curious to see how booths have decided to handle this. Read more

Old Women

I’m getting older… single mom, couple of kids…I’m relatively casual, a jeans and t-shirt person predominantly although on a hot day I’ll wear a long loose skirt. I don’t wear make-up, I have a practical shoulder length haircut which I tie in a ponytail when I’m teaching dance classes. My hair is string straight and I have freckles. I’m pretty ordinary.

I know people whose appearances matter much more to them it seems. People who’ve had cosmetic surgeries, who diet and restrict their meals. People who work out incessantly. Friends who read Cosmo, while I read Bust.

Conversations with my friends come around more often to our bodies. There’s a general sense of “our bodies are falling apart.” People seem to think I don’t struggle the same way or to the same degree. Maybe this is true…I’ve been giving it some thought and I’ve come up with a few ideas.

I don’t think I’ve built up a dependence on my appearance. The way I look has little impact on the work I do. I (try to) live off my brain and talents and know that any relationship that is based on superficial shells is fleeting so not worth the effort. I grew up teased for my freckles, and the kids, cruel as they are, called me chicken legs (and I know now that my legs are/were no different than anyone else’s!)

I was tall at a young age so in grade nine gym class when we were all weighed on a scale (hunh? what was that for anyway?) and I was 115 lbs I felt like a fat cow. Today, many years later, I know that I was a healthy weight for my height. Just because I was more than 6 inches taller than all the tiny girls who were under 100 lbs did not mean I was fat! Ridiculous. The point is that I never had a period where I was really happy or excited about my body. I never thought to myself “I have a great legs/abs/breasts/eyes/whatever.” I mostly ignored my body. Sure this caused other issues but it’s giving me a good perspective for this aging stuff.

When I was in my late teens/early twenties I had two older women in my life. I don’t know their ages in years but both had older children/teenagers at the time. One had beautiful long flowing grey-white hair and was a gardener. She spoke gently and thoughtfully and was intelligent and exceptionally insightful. She made a wonderful impression on me and I thought that someday I wanted to be just like her. The other woman was small and incredibly strong. She was the mother of 3 girls who were all incredibly smart, talented, and beautiful young women. I wanted to feel supported like her kids did. I wanted to support my kids the way she supported hers. I wanted to be confidant like her, to be able to see things clearly like she did, to understand like she did. She had a way of making me be honest with myself about things I didn’t even realize were problems. She was the first one to point out to me that the problems in my marriage were problems – that other people were happy and that maybe I might want to be happy too. I remember the way she made me feel more than I remember the way she looked but when I saw her just a few years ago she was covered in wrinkles and her hair was a soft grey. She was bustling, involved in work, volunteering, spending time with her grown kids – she was beautiful. I wanted to be just like her too.

I think the fact that I have these role models/heroines – these admirable women in my life and that I met them when I was young and impressionable is significant. Without someone to show that with age comes good things how can we know that growing older can be good? Having these women to look up to and remember eases the transitions that our bodies and lives go through.

Aging in our society is hard for both men and women. Our culture is tied to youth and beauty and age is equated with uselessness. It’s hard to resist the advertising for wrinkle creams and hair dyes and all the other products and procedures that promise youth, i.e. value. For women though, I think it’s an added challenge that there are so few older women to call ‘successfull’. Women who are currently 60+ were less involved in public life when they were younger than women are now, and so there are fewer popular examples of ‘success’. The older women that tend to come to mind are from show biz and are known for the numbers of cosmetic surgeries they’ve had.

Older women also make up one of the largest groups of people living in poverty. This is another reason why we don’t have a lot of positive role models for growing older. Without enough money to live it’s hard to inspire the next generation. I think though, that some people are more afraid of wrinkles than poverty stats.

So what is it that these bodies are doing that make us feel like they’re falling apart? Well, thinning, greying hair, abs not so tight anymore, skin isn’t the same as it was when we were younger. All I can say is that yeah, change is hard and try to point out that it’s just change. If we could change the perception would we have an easier time of dealing with it? Does the language we use (i.e. “falling apart”) make it that much harder to adjust (à la Sapir-Whorf)? Can people change a perception that is so ingrained?

I’d like to lose some weight and work out more but I wouldn’t change my grey hair or trade in my baby stretch marks. I’m sure most people harbour a desire to be pleasing on the eyes but I would never want to be so dependent on my appearance that I’d be crippled by body changes.

I look forward to getting older. There are so many good things to look forward to. I feel like I’ve been waiting a long time to be old, that this will be the best part of my life. My confidence is beginning to grow and I’m just starting to get the hang of how to live. I also think (maybe naively) that with age will come more understanding and certainty. I’m getting old enough to see that the more I learn, the more questions there are. I’m starting to doubt the correlation of wisdom and age – but I don’t worry specifically about body changes anymore. Our wrinkles are the proof that we’re survivors. But I’m not sure women will ever be convinced to look at it that way.

Rugged Convenience: Corsair Flash Voyager USB 2.0 Flash Memory Drive

I was in the market for an mp3 player so that I could listen to podcasts, music and lectures while walking back and forth to classes. I chose the Sandisk Sansa e250 and got it from TigerDirect.ca. That’s another story though; if you want you can read about it here. One of the nice features of the Tiger Direct website is that the home page is filled with daily specials. The one that caught my eye was the Corsair Flash Voyager. Read more

Wii Wii Wii all the way home

Less than 56 hours until the E3 show floor opens its doors to the likes of me. One of the cool things to be checking out this year is Nintendo’s Wii (pronounced “we”), their next generation gaming console. There’s no big competition for them this year in terms of home consoles since Microsoft’s Xbox 360 dominated the floor last year and thus has had its turn (and has nothing grand to show off this year) and Sony’s Playstation 3 continues to drag its heels, postponing its release date again and again. Read more

Tamogotchi Love

I met my first Tamagotchi last winter when my daughter received one as a gift. Days of feeding, playing, sleeping, and cleaning the poop of this the small, portable, electronic toy ensued. She takes care of all its needs by pushing the little buttons just below the screen. With good care it eventually it grows into an adult, meets the matchmaker, and has a baby. The new generation takes over and eventually it grows into an adult and so on and so on et cetera ad infinitum. Read more

WoW – The New Birth Control

Rob acquired a 14-day free trial dvd for World of Warcraft. Since we’re getting hyped up for E3 and our trip to California (next week!) we thought it would be the perfect time to get in the spirit and see what all the WoW hype is about. Four days, 3 characters, and a combined 20 levels later I think I see the addiction taking hold. The first night it took forever to install, lots of upgrades, patches, etc. By the time we got started I was already tired but somehow we got the human male up to level 6. Lots of Kobold Vermin dead. At 2 a.m. when I told Rob I was going to bed he said he’d be right there. Hmmmm. “Right there” was close to an hour later.

The next night was my turn. I created a human female character and we took turns levelling her. More Kobold vermin dead. Then Kobold workers and Rob was killing some warriors when I went to bed.

The game is on Rob’s laptop so he’s been carrying it around with him, playing with friends at lunch, playing at the coffeeshop after work. I really felt like I was starting to lag. So Saturday we worked out a deal – I would cut his grass since he has bad allergies and in exchange he would do some server work for me for some other sites I’m working on. I did the grass cutting during the day but he couldn’t get to the computer until after his daughter was asleep. Bwahahahahahahhaha. While he struggled with Gallery2 I got to create yet another character. A beautiful and talented Druid Night Elf named Daksha. A new race meant a new map, new quests, new spells. It was so much like being pregnant and giving birth. Choosing a name for a character is as challenging as naming a child. Luckily there are plenty of baby name sites. This was when I noticed the brewing addiction. I was probably ready to quit around 2a.m. but kept telling myself, “one more quest, just finish this last one.” After all, can’t leave the guy to suffer without the antidote to his spider bite. That would just be plain cruel. With Rob’s prodding I got her to level 6, found her a new home and put her to bed in the Inn. I hated the spiders – they sneak up behind you and start attacking when you’re not expecting it. I’ve got some better spells now and hope to be able to fight them off more easily the next time I get a chance to play. I’m still in need of the spider egg but the spiders freak me out too much I just can’t bare to go into their cave.

I didn’t get to play any last night since I have to prepare some photos which will be exhibited here at a conference while I’m in California and I’m having a heck of a time getting them done. I wonder what’s going to happen when the 2 weeks expire. I wonder if Rob will subscribe or if he’ll be ready to try something else. I wonder if I’ll get my own install…

More about Booth Babes

So Noah wants to bring back the booth babes. He’s a 17 year old high school student (technically not even old enough to get in to E3) and he’s crying that taking booth babes out of E3 is a travesty.

/sigh/

There is more to life than booth babes. I don’t go to E3 for the booth babes. This will be my 3rd year going and I go to play games, try new toys, get warm, be a tourist, hang out with geeks, do some research, and of course, collect swag. I am thrilled with the decision to put an end to booth babes. It’s sickening to watch the geeks line up, with their state-of-the-art digital cameras no less, and take turns taking pictures of each other with their arms wrapped around one of the models. It’s sad to watch the wanna-be starlets pimped into this sort of role. According to Robin in 2004 there were women who “were also inserting candy between their butt cheeks (while clothed, but still) and asking developers to BEND OVER AND TAKE IT OUT WITH THEIR TEETH.” Barf.

It’s about time this conference applies the same standards of sexual responsibility that we apply everywhere else. Don’t like it? Don’t come. All the more swag for me.

A recurring suggestion is that we add some boothdudes to the mix to appease the women attendees.

Here’s a pic of a booth dude that I snapped last year, in front of the display for Gods & Heroes. Notice that he’s promoting this game without any problem and he doesn’t have to sell his body to do it. Go figure. I don’t need naked men at my gaming conference and I doubt I’d be seeing any. I’m all for a clothing optional lifestyle, but this is exploitation and that’s demeaning. I want to talk to the developers, try the latest stuff, learn something and have some fun. Isn’t anyone else there for that?

I’m really curious if there were more women attending last year as gamers/developers/industry pros or as boothbabes. I’d like to believe that the number of female attendees are rising and I’m hoping that this year with the new policy there will be even more women attending. I’m also hoping that the men who value women for who they are as individuals, fully complete with brains, personalities, ideas, thoughts, etc. will speak up and say they’ve had enough of this exploitation too. I’m hoping for the day when I can walk through the expo without having to see games like 3feel on larger than life screens.

Boothbabes are more proof of a patriarchal gender-power imbalance that is pervasive in our culture. Women’s bodies are exploited – discussion of it is all through this blog and many others. Evidence to see for yourself is easy to find in the media around you. Truth is, there’s a dominant group of men who have power, and they’ll do what they want. If they want bodies up there they’ll buy some. And if you’re into boothbabes then you fit with this group. If you support it you are condoning the subordination of women. No way around it. If women had other options do you think they’d honestly choose to be a booth babe? Like Wendy said in a comment of another post, also about exploiting women’s bodies, “is it that people really want to cook fries or is it that they would live in poverty if they didn’t otherwise”? There’s choice and then there’s choice. I applaud this progress. Now if only they could do something about the ERA.

I know Rob is going to say that taking the boothbabes out of E3 takes the fun out of the conference – but is that what you really think? Really really? Do you really believe it’s justified to use a woman’s body to sell a game? Would you want your daughter working there?

Are you a list person?

Do you make lists? Do you hate lists? Do you realize there are different kinds of lists?

First there are the lists that give you chores to do. Often other people make these lists for you: wash windows, clean eavestroughs, fix the faucet, clean the clutter off the counter, catch up the mending, etc. Lists like these are endless and rarely are the tasks on them fun or exciting. Someone has to maintain this list or the jobs never get done – unless you’re one of those rare cases where jobs get done as soon as they’re discovered in need of doing.

But there is another sort of list: the list that records your dreams, the one that lets you think about all the things you’d like to do given the opportunity. This is the philosophy behind communities like 43 places and 43 things.

I went to a workshop in January where one of the keys to reaching a goal was shared this way: make a list of your goals, whether it’s living on the coast, seeing the mountain from your deck every morning, working at home, or going to Greece when you graduate. Whatever goals you have, record them somewhere. Part two is sharing the information with other people. Here’s how these steps will help you achieve your goal:

1. When other people know what you have planned they can support you while holding you accountable. When they start asking you how the plans for Greece are going you can tell them great. They’re excited for you and it will help you stay motivated.
2. When these other people know you’re planning a trip to Greece they’ll start cutting out articles and sending you links about things to do, places to stay, and cheap flights to Greece. This cuts down on the amount of work you’ll have to do to plan and will also keep you motivated.
3. The third way that recording your goals will help is that when you are faced with making a decision (career, life, relationship) you will be able to consult your goals and see which choice brings you closer to your goal. If you know your ideal home is someplace warm it will help you say no to positions in the Arctic. It’s not turning down an opportunity, it’s helping you stay focused on your goals. When you are looking for positions or projects you’ll have a clue where to start looking. Without the goals you’ll flit from one place to another always wondering if you’re doing the right thing, making the right choice – or if you’re happy yet.

   Things aren’t always perfect, and ideas, philosophies, and situations all change. When I took the workshop I was frustrated because the group was made up of 1st and 3rd year university students, save me (mom, student, etc). I don’t have the freedom to picture myself living on the side of a mountain or even near a coast or even somewhere warm. I have a custody order that says the closest to a mountain I’m going to get while my kids are young is the landfill 20 minutes away. Sometimes when we’re setting our goals we have to take all kinds of other things into consideration – but stil, if you can, make some goals. Lists of goals are okay – nobody is going to nag you about them – and even if they did, these are things you want to do – let people help you do them.

   Today’s list is 2 pages long and I made it on paper, in a notebook so that if I don’t want to look at it I can shut the cover. I’m a little anxious that the list might be overwhelming but so far it feels good. It covers a lot of the things I’d like to do this summer around the garden and yard and a pile of art that has been waiting for me for eons. It has the beginnings of me thinking about grad school, mostly what area I might like to research. There’s nothing there about where I want to live or what I want to be…nothing major about “what I want out of life” or “what happiness means to me” or any of the biggies. I’m starting small and taking this a little step at a time.

Learning to enjoy life

I’m learning some things. I’m trying to learn to enjoy life more. I’ve been participating at 43 places.com and looking at all the beautiful places there are in the world to visit, all the amazing history to see, all the cool people to meet and watching the people who are really doing all of this.

It used to be I’d see some place cool like Muir Woods and think, “yeah, that’s cool. . . but it’s too far away, I have no money, I need to stay close to home, etc” but something changed. Well, several things actually. I met someone who made a choice a few years before that he would be a do-er and a go-er and so he started doing and going to things like conferences and taking trips that required planning and investment. I also started back to school and got a student loan which for the first time in my adult life gave me enough to money to buy groceries and have something left over. I got to feel what it was like to have a little bit of money. I also started to think that maybe I deserved some happiness too.

It may be simple to many people but it was a huge revelation to me when I realized that if I wanted to do something or go somewhere I could do something about it. I didn’t need to just survive each day, I could enrich it. I could make it the best day possible, for myself and my family. I am not destined to be poor forever (or this is what I keep telling myself). It’s not wrong to want to have some financial freedom. It may be difficult to change this and the process of getting there is difficult if you’ve never done it but it’s not impossible.

Money may not buy you happiness, but without any it is difficult to be happy. Money stress is hard on families, on relationships, on having fun. I’m not saying there aren’t free things to do; I’ve done this for years and still do, but the options are greater if you can afford small pleasures. or big pleasures. It’s also easier to enjoy these pleasures when you know your basic needs are met.

What I’ve realized is that I don’t have to live below the poverty line forever. Kids are young, I’m a student and a single mum; these things all add up to a classic poverty picture. (This is too often the case and it needs to change. But that’s a whole other post.) But I’m thinking beyond now. I’m trying to think about what it is I want to be able to do: go to cool places if I find them, have good food on a regular basis, live in a house that isn’t crumbling around me, live in a safer neighbourhood, send my kids to a good school, be able to have leisure time with them on a regular basis… basically, experience life instead of worrying about it or missing out because I feel stuck in some permanent condition of helplessness.

I also don’t want to raise my kids thinking that they are poor and will always be poor. I want them to be inventive of ways to meet their needs. I want them to dream big. I want them to think of what they want and how they can reach those goals, with constant attention to balance between reward and effort and strategy. I don’t want them to give up on something because it costs too much – I want them to figure out how to meet that need. I also don’t want any of us to be punching a clock or working under someone else’s orders – unless it is completely by self-directed choice – not a coerced and false choice.

I’m not willing to just wait out the future. I want out of poverty mentality now and I’m going to do everything I can to enjoy life instead of just getting through it.