April 2, 2013

• How to Feel Old and Stupid

  I know… but I’ve been SOOOOO serious around here, while in real life?  I’ve just been laughing my gludious off, lately.  So I have to be honest with you and admit that we are having TOO much fun with our Nook Android tablets. 
  

  ((NoTe:  My friend V sold me her Nook, and I got an N2A chip for it that turns it into an Android… but you can remove the chip and turn it back into a Nook whenever you like.  Which I don’t, because the Android version of it has a Kindle eReader app, and I like Amazon.com FAR AND AWAY better than Barnes and Noble’s… and besides, that’s where all the games are.  We pick up free games from Google Play whenever we go to McDonald’s – usually after dance class, for supper, while the free books I snagged for the week at Amazon are downloading.))

  When we got the Nook, it came with Crossword puzzles and Sudoku… which, if you know me, put me in seventh HEAVEN.  My grandma Fern was a crossword puzzle lover, and I helped her, ever since I was little.  She had big thick books of crossword dictionaries under her sofa that confounded me… because it seems INCREDIBLE that books that big were full of words… just words that meant other words.  It was crazy. 

  Of course Sudokus weren’t popular until the late 1990s, when internet brought puzzles from all over the world to my door.  And you remember when I was into Killer Sudokus and then Kakuros (which… you can’t even FIND, anymore, to my regret).  I’ve always loved problem-solving games, whether word or number.  And they SAY that it makes you smarter, helps with memorization skills, sharpens your left brain, and prevents Alzhiemer’s.  I believe it.  My grandma Fern (paternal grandmother) was one of the most rational, logical, and methodical people I knew… she was fully cognizant… while my Grandpa John (maternal grandfather) wouldn’t read, wouldn’t work puzzles, wouldn’t do anything but stare at a TV, and he was slowly losing ALL of his faculties but quick when he got older.  I keep telling Brian that, and shoving games and books under his nose, for that very reason.

  We had computer games all of our growing up years.  First Atari – I was the freak of nature little girl who loved playing ‘Pitfall’… I sat with a notebook and LOGGED every screen… I made it all the way to the end (and got Pop a patch for his collection), too!  Have I mentioned that I have my grandma Fern’s weltangschauun?  Well… I do, and the apple doesn’t fall far from her tree.  We got the kids an Atari a few christmases ago, but nobody really wants to reach the end of Pitfall, these days.  Too many newer, higher intensity graphic games out there.

  Then came the Nintendo (in the 80s), and WoW.  You have NO IDEA how much time we spent playing Tetris with my cousins at the Cottage every summer… back when there were cousins around and a Cottage we were welcome at.  It was the rainy day thing to do… and I absolutely LOVED Tetris.  To this day, I love Tetris… but the Android version sucks… it’s not the same without the controller and Tchaikovski’s ‘Dance of the SugarPlum Fairies’ playing.  We also still have an Nintendo NES… with Super Mario 2 for Brian (I like the graphics of the first one, better… but can’t play any game that requires dodging mushrooms for crap.)  We also have Dr. Mario… which is a TWO person version of Tetris… you stack pills in a bottle on top of the matching viruses to kill all of the bugs, though.  VERY fun… Lydia and I have been doing that for about a week, now… she’s actually really good.  Owen?  Not so much.  My boys prefer the racing games… they have a thing for ExciteBike.  Which… I have stayed away from motocross ever since Brian tried to teach me to ride a motorcycle in a cornfield.  NOT kewl.

  We never did the Playstation thing much (I think we have one, but the only games we have are Crash Bandicoot and the New Tetris), but between Nintendo and Atari, my family did have a Commodore 64 and then a Commodore 128… but I don’t remember much.  I liked the Winter Olympics and the Caveman Ugh-Lypics… but they never showed up anywhere else, ever again.  So sad… because they could upgrade Caveman Ugh-lympics, and it would RAWK.  No, seriously.  It had events like ‘wife tossing’ – where your caveman grabs his woman (I liked Bertha, best) by the leg, swung her around, and let her go like a discus.  It was fun to watch them bounce.  Politically incorrect, most definitely, but fun.  There was dino-racing, fire-making (it was HARD not to make ‘em hyperventilate blowing on the sticks!), and more.  It was actually one of the wittier games of the time.

  The first games that we got when the tablet came into our lives I can totally blame on my friend Ali (Alidansma).  She told us we HAD to play ‘Angry Birds’, first.  It came with the Android chip, so I was pretty excited that I didn’t have to go find or try to figure out how to download the thing.  It’s a great game, in case you never played (…and I’m late to the game on these things, so… who hasn’t?)  I made it thru the WHOLE thing… and am kind of peeved that now they’ve added more levels, after I’ve finished.  You don’t ADD on…!!  I know for sure I’m not going back – I’ve got ‘Angry Birds: Rio’, ‘Angry Birds: Seasons’, and ‘Angry Birds: Space’… and I think they have a Star Wars version, too, but I don’t see the point of getting more if I’m already overloaded with the thing.

    And honestly, I haven’t played birds in a while.  I moved on to ‘Bebbled’ (stuck on the last level of the X-mas challenge for two months, now…), and ‘Jewels’… until Ali told me we HAD to try TripleTown.  Which I happen to absolutely love… and it’s really good for the kids, because it requires a lot of forethought and money management.  Not that Lydia needs help with that – my kids HORDE their cash, as it is.  But it’s about sound spending practices in order to win.  In Triple Town, you build a city by getting threes: three grasses make a bush.  Three bushes make a tree, three trees make a cottage, three cottages make a house, three houses make a castle, three castles make a floating castle.  Likewise, three gravestone (or bears) make a church, three churches make a cathedral, three cathedrals make a treasure chest.  Three rocks make a boulder, three boulder make a HUGE cache of money.  It’s fun to see what you can do with one little square of land.

  And up until now, I’ve kept up.  Okay, not at the role-playing games like Mario or Bandicoot, but… I’ve kept up.  But we’ve found two new games, and… my daughter is thrashing my hiney.  I just… I don’t know if I’m dumb or if she’s got better skills beause she’s been introduced to physics earlier via these games, or what.  But I swear to you… I can get it – by myself – but it takes FORever for me to grasp what has to happen.

  The first of these is Cut the Rope.  Ho. Lee. Wha.  And yes, I realize that it’s been around probably as long as Angry Birds, because I’ve seen Om-Nom around on the internet.  I didn’t know what he was, but I’ve seen him.  But the other day I was at McDonald’s looking at games, and saw ‘Cut the Rope’ and decided to try it on a whim.  And of course whatever I get, Lydia gets for HER Nook/Android… so she got it, and she’s TOTALLY kicking my bottom at it.  See, Om-nom is the little green dude, and he’d like you to feed him the candy.  But it’s tied up to ropes, and you need to cut the right ropes to swing the candy over (and score points by getting stars on the way) to Om-Nom’s mouth.  It’s about gravity and physics and timing and angle and… I guess I’m just too blonde or something.  I mean, I get there, but I have to trial-n-error it to do it, and Lydia?  That squirt just cuts and flies… and she’s there.  It frustrates the heck out of me!!  Now she might need me to trial-and-error some so that she can get an idea of what happens, but mostly she just… goes.  And fuddy-duddy, brain-dead Mama is left going, “When did I get old and stupid?”  I thought these games were supposed to enhance my brain power, not suck me dry!!  ((Do *NOT* laugh.))

    My other favorite is Pudding Monsters.  Lydia found it, and got it, but I thought it looked funky.  She let me try it on hers, and I liked the sound effects, and watching the blobs go flying off the table… so I downloaded it last Wednesday, and didn’t try it until this weekend, when she said she was stuck.  I… have to tell you, the game has NO instructions, and the pudding monsters are hilarious to listen to, but they don’t speak English, and aren’t any help whatsoever.  And it was driving me crazy, just figuring out how to play the game.  Lydia tried to explain it, but I swear she was speaking Pudding Monster, because I didn’t understand a WORD of it.

  Basically, you have these red blobs with one eyeball each.  They’re on the Veggie Tales kitchen counter.  You have to connect them to each other, but you can’t move them unless you bump them into something else (cups, sofas, fridges, or each other), or they fly off the screen, cuz they’re slippery.   There are ‘stars’ on the counter… and the screen will flash how many stars you need to be on to pass a portion of the level.  So you have to do each level up to four times, to pass it.  I didn’t get that.  So the first time, you have to connect them on NO stars.  Then you have to connect them with the combined monster on ONE star, then on TWO stars, etc.  The slimey green has sticky that keeps them from flying off the table.  It. Is. TRICKY!!!  And the monsters talk to you, like they’re giving you advice, but you can’t understand a word.  It’s funny and mind-blowing and… and Lydia and I are just having a BALL seeing who can complete a level first.  Sometimes she gets stymied, but mostly she’s all reaching over to move my blobs, and I’m all howling for her to lemme’lone while trying to keep her hands off m’Nook and flying off the board because I’m laughing so hard I can’t see. 

  It’s a riot.  We’re having a ball over here.
  But man… do I feel old and stupid, these days!!

  • 10:30 am
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