Home | Join! | Help | Browse | Forums | NuWorld | NWF | PoPo   

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
Falling Behind
Saturday. 11.9.13 12:37 pm
Well

well

well.


I used to play this game all the time, DDR. Dance dance revolution, for the uninitiated. There are a bunch of arrows that go by on the screen, and you try to stamp on the "dance floor" or ground pad in the square that corresponds to the arrows on the screen. You start with easy songs, one arrow at a time, and work your way up to crazy, impossible songs with five arrows on each beat. The screen is filled with arrows, busting with arrows, arrows overwhelming the screen and pointing in every direction.


Easy Mode

I played with my friends, and I found it interesting to watch them at the precise moment when the number of arrows became too much, and they essentially lost control of the game, lost count of the arrows, lost the cadence and then the rhythm. What followed was usually a kind of controlled train wreck that ended by losing the game. At this important breaking point, there were usually one of two responses: some people would stop altogether, take a deep breath, and begin again. Others would helplessly bat at squares, just after the beat, trying to get every other arrow on the screen, focusing on one or two directions and trying to get at least these arrows, etc. These people often looked panicked and harried, and it took them longer to get back on the beat. But the people who stopped, composed themselves, and continued often lost. The game rewards you for arrows met. It rewards you slightly less for correct arrows slightly off beat. It really kills you for strings of unmet arrows. So while desperate arrow punching seemed harried and stupid, it tended to be a better strategy because while you still suffered losses, the hole you were digging was not inescapably deep.

In DDR and in life, I've always been a sort of a harried arrow presser, batting down problems like whack-a-moles, combating stress by doing at least half of what was required, or doing everything slightly out of phase, so that even if things weren't done right, they were at least *done*.

I'm still sort of randomly tapping work arrows, doing just enough in all four directions that my remaining life bar stays just barely in the green, but feel like I've kind of been falling off the wagon in terms of my friendships, especially since the beginning of October. In the last couple of weeks I've felt like I've gone to bed, pulled the covers over my head, and let unmet arrows flow by in a torrent of flashing animations and j-pop music.

It's led me to the point where I should probably make some phone calls or write some emails, but how do you begin such emails?

"Hey, so it's been a while--- how's that whole 'marriage falling apart thing' going??"
"Hey bff! Cool email about finally hanging out with the crush you've had for years! Sorry for the slow response, I've been really busy eating oreos, sleeping and playing the bodhran! You are a treasured friend!"
"Hey, so did your ex-boyfriend ever kill himself or what?"
"Hey, thanks for the email three months ago about having new baby twins! I'm really excited about this new stage in your life, which you can clearly tell by the priority that I assigned to writing you back!"
"Hey, thanks for taking the time to write that really long email helping my friend find a new job. You probably don't remember writing it, because you haven't heard from me in 12 days, but it was great!"
"Hey, I wanted to get back to you about that serious life decision advice you asked me about.... I kind of assume that by now you've made the decision already, so I guess that's less work for me! lol!"
"Hey, I got your email about wanting to talk to me on the phone about something important. Could you just text me whatever you wanted to say? I'm really busy listening to Taylor Swift and cooking frozen pizzas in a frying pan."

Everyone Else:

Start watching at about 0:58.

Me:

The ironic thing is that I've been paying lots of attention to my physically present friends (I went to church like FOUR TIMES this week), which is a big part of the reason that I've been falling behind on my correspondence with friends who are farther away. Or so I tell myself. The days that I wasn't at church I just lay in my bed staring blankly at my wall until it was late enough to go to sleep. But here I am on Nutang, saying hello to all of my Nutang buddies that I have neglected. Sorry Nutang buddies. :3 You are my treasured friends.
3 Comments.


Better late than never, I think. If my friend Casey from St. John's replied to me now, after three or four years, I'd still feel a lot better than if she just never replied at all and I never heard from her again. Doesn't really matter what you talk about as long as you show that you still care about the friendship.
» randomjunk on 2013-11-09 04:14:51

DDR! I used to play that other version called EZ2Dance.. that one has 3 arrows to stomp and two circles for you to swat with your hands.

I'm sure that regardless how you start that email, they will be glad to hear from you and forgive you for staying undercovers, watching animations and listening to j-pop. What animes are you watching right now? Anything interesting?
» Nuttz on 2013-11-10 03:01:00

IN FACT I LOVE DDR AAAAAAA
E-mails are hard to write, universally, I think. Still, I guess it's the thought that's important, and the sentiments you include. Distance hopefully doesn't dictate important relationships too much, anyway.

re: VERY well put. I'm in agreement on all parts, especially the very last sentence of your comment--"But if a guy is interested it is hard to hold him off that long."
» Unicornasaurus on 2013-11-10 04:26:40

Name.

URL.

[to enter your email, use "mailto:youremail@domain.com"]
Subject.

Comment.

Word verification.

Copy the first 4 characters only.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.

Zanzibar's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

NuTang is the first web site to implement PPGY Technology. This page was generated in 0.326seconds.

  Send to a friend on AIM | Set as Homepage | Bookmark Home | NuTang Collage | Terms of Service & Privacy Policy | Link to Us | Monthly Top 10s
All content © Copyright 2003-2047 NuTang.com and respective members. Contact us at NuTang[AT]gmail.com.