Sims Socialization

Sad news, our poor son was the first guy to get kicked off of So You Think You Can Dance. Tragic. He is dealing with the news well, all things considered. Hehe.

Kyle and I were out having dinner with some friends the other day when I totally put my foot in my mouth and committed one of my usual social faux pas. Our friends were really nice about it, but it got me to thinking about the video game, The Sims. Random segueway, but stick with me here, it'll all come back around eventually. Unlike my beloved husband, I am not much of a gamer, but at one point a few years ago I became obsessed with The Sims. For those of you not familiar with it, it is basically a video game about life with you as the main character. The only real "objective" is to get to the highest rank in your career if you so desire, but the real fun of the game is just tooling around and doing day to day activities like cooking, eating, taking out the trash, and socializing. It doesn't sound that fun when I describe it, but trust me, it gets very addicting. I don't know why, I can barely bring myself to cook and take out the trash in real life but when it comes to doing it in the virtual world I could spend hours on end doing it. The part of the game that always fascinated me was the socializing aspect. You get points for every person you socialize with and the game tells you on a scale of 1 to 100 how much that person likes/doesn't like you. The best part is that whenever you interact with that person, these positive or negative signs pop up above their head to tell you whether your relationship with that person is improving or deteriorating. For months when I would play that game I would find myself in real life social situations, imagining the positive or negative signs above a person's head.

"Hey Jane, I like your dress!" POSITIVE.

"Hey Joe, wanna go grab a drink for happy hour?"
"Actually Cheryl, don't you remember I gave up drinking after I got that DUI?" NEGATIVE.

The problem with real life is that more times than not I think people tend to hide how they are really feeling about you, so no matter how hard I try to see the positive or negative signs above someone's head sometimes they just refuse to let you in. So I think the lesson for myself here is to stop trying to figure out what they are thinking or feeling. In contrast, I think of myself as someone who wears my heart on my sleeve, and often it takes a lot for someone to illicit a negative out of me and not very much for the positives.

"Hi Cheryl." POSITIVE
"How's it going?" POSITIVE POSITIVE
"Want to grab a cup of coffee with me and go shopping?" POSITIVE x 1 million

Anyone who takes the coffee and shopping route is on the fast track to 100 points in my book!

Sweet Child O' Mine

You know those morphing machines they have at Dave N' Busters where you take a picture with your significant other and out spits an image of what your child is supposed to look like? Most of the ones I've seen produce children of mutant-like qualities, so hopefully they aren't very accurate. I've always been curious to see what it would look like if Kyle and I tried it out, but I've never been willing to pony up the small fortune needed in order to get a picture that I'll likely throw away 5 seconds later. Instead I prefer to spend my money on playing games like skee ball and Tetris that will earn me tickets to buy junk in the form of stuffed animals and rubber balls that I will throw away 5 seconds later.

Imagine my utter horror when I found out what our child could possibly looked like as Kyle and I were watching So You Think You Can Dance and he turned to me and said, "That guy is what our kid could look like." "That guy" being this guy:

Okay, so he doesn't look so bad in this picture but on the show he just seems really weird, and coming from me, the queen of weird, that says a lot. I am worried for our future child because my mom is convinced that since Kyle and I will be having a bi-racial child, he/she will be the most amazing looking child ever to walk the planet. I once knew a girl in college who was herself a product of a bi-racial coupling and she said that in her opinion, bi-racial children are either really good looking or really strange looking. I realize that the idea of bi-racial children being beautiful is one big stereotype, but I can't argue too much since my bi-racial godchildren, the offspring of Cherann, are gorgeous themselves. I have this fear that since there is already high expectations for our child's looks, if he/she is anything less than perfect than they will be shunned. Totally irrational, I know.

What do you think? Does

= ?

I would prefer having children that look like this:

or this:

No pressure indeed.

Side note: I have to say that good advertising really does work, as I am obsessed with finding out what the ending of Hostel II is since the commercial says it is an ending that will be talked about by everyone or something to that effect, but I am too much of a wuss to even google it because I hate scary/gory movies and I am afraid of actually seeing an image of what is underneath that bag. But if anyone out there goes to see it or finds out, please satisfy my curiosity for me and let me know what the heck happens in the end!

Bloggers Block

So I figure I ought to post before I lose the two readers I have right now. Even though I'm officially on summer vacation and should theoretically have much more time to blog than I did before, I'm discovering that a) I'm going through major bloggers block and b) I really don't have as much time as I thought I would. I envisioned spending my summer getting caught up on my life and those of my friends, possibly reading a good book or two, and relaxing at the beach. Instead it has been a whirlwind of dirty diapers (babysitting Marcus), constant e-mailing to catch up with the odd jobs I've been doing, and various family gatherings (birthdays, graduations, etc.). Not that I should be complaining or anything, as it's a welcome change from the continual stresses of grad school.

I guess I've been feeling pretty un-original lately, hence I have not had much of interest that I felt warranted the space that I would take up in the bloggerverse. I have, however, been perusing others' blogs in my spare time. For example, two of my friends were in a debate about whether or not Kelly Kapowski actually sang the song "Blue Moon" in a talent show, so in an attempt to settle their disagreement I tried googling it since everyone knows that anything that shows up in writing on the internet is a tried and true fact. All of a sudden, a bazillion blog entries about Saved by the Bell popped up and I was in blogger heaven. I mean, who knew that so many other people shared a sick fascination for bad 90's television that I thought made me so unique? Anyway, there are some really good bloggers out there. In fact, I don't think I've met a blog that I haven't liked so far. I guess that's what makes it so easy to waste away hours on mindless google searches.

I do have to say that I saw the movie "Knocked Up" and it was hilarious. Kyle and I were talking about what a good job it does of portraying both the male and the female point of view in relationships. The most classic scene was where this husband (played by Paul Rudd of "Clueless", "Friends", and a more obscure role in "Romeo + Juliet" with Claire Daines & Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife (played by an actress whose name I don't know but I think she played Adam Sandler's ex-girlfriend in "Big Daddy") were arguing about something he had done, and he frustratedly tells her, "Just tell me what you want me to do!". To which she so eloquently replied, "I don't want to tell you what to do, I want you to do it because you want to do it because you love me, not because I tell you to do it!" Yes, I have used that line on more than a few occassions, and I'd be willing to bet the farm that more than a few women residing in the world of marital bliss have too.