Confessions of a Geeky Mom: Star Wars

Showing posts with label Star Wars. Show all posts

Friday, June 17, 2011

OMG! TEH WOMENZ!! THEY GAME!!!

Image via WikipediaSo, there I was, being a Geeky Mom, checking out Twitter after an extended session of mining and building in Terraria with Trusty Friends NEligahn and Ellif, when @HMXThrasher made this tweet:

WHAT?! STOP THE PRESSES: people other than teenage boys play videogames! GASP, WOMEN EVEN PLAY THEM!!? cnn.com/2011/TECH/gami…

(what crap CNN)

Being someone of the female persuasion, of course I had to check this article out. I read it, re-read it, and face-palmed (appropriately on Captain Picard Day, I might add).

OK, CNN writers--just where the hell have you been for the last, oh, 40-ish years? I probably was gaming before half of you were even born. My dad and I played Cat and Mouse on the Magnavox Odyssey. I played Pong with my aunt when it first came out. The Pac-Man game at the arcade ate a ton of my quarters along with my time. I shot up millions of Asteroids and a few thousand AT-ATs in The Empire Strikes Back game on the Atari 2600. I play games on multiple platforms now. If it's fun, I play it. If it's great, I play it for years. I still play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) for Jolee Bindo one-liners. I play Star Trek Online with my son. My dad, kids, hubby, and I all play Beatles Rock Band together--can't beat three-generation gaming. My daughter and I trade Pokemon. All of us in my family are going to be playing Star Wars: The Old Republic when it comes out.

Lest CNN and others who are 'speedbumps on the Clue Highway' think that I am an aberration in the female gamer category, Hubby and I quest through Tyria, Cantha, and Elona in Guild Wars, along with our guildmates in The Lost Haven--many of whom are female! I've shot down my share of orcs in Neverwinter Nights (NWN) 1 and 2 and LOTRO, all while gaming with other women. I've installed mods for NWN 1 and 2, KOTOR 1 and 2, Dragon Age, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, and Mass Effect--many of which were created by--shock, horror, FEMALES.

Even more--we talk, write, and tweet about gaming. Trusty Friend leXX and I podcasted for 2 years about gaming on LucasCast, and share about different games regularly in forum posts and tweets. Several women host the podcast 'Corellian Run Radio'. Trusty Friends NEligahn, Ellif, and I are working on the Crossed Lightsabers podcast. There are any number of women writing for gaming websites and magazines. I'm certainly not the only female gamer who blogs, either.

Welcome to the 21st century, CNN. Glad you made it out of your mom's basement to discover that we gals have been upstairs for years, XBox controllers or Orochi gaming mice in hand, fragging VC in Call of Duty: Black Ops or slicing and dicing the bosses in Fallout: New Vegas and Red Dead Redemption. I'll even share my controller with you if you promise to quit being so idiotically surprised that women actually game. Try and keep up with us, boys. We women aren't going to hold back on our leet gaming skillz for you.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

You know you've reached geeky family status when....

Image via WikipediaI have officially reached geeky family status with certain members of my family. Now, mind you, as a confirmed Geek, I have had my share of experiences as being 'second class'. We geeks are never in the "A-class" crowd in high school, it's just one of those things we learn to live with, and even learn from as we grow up. For the most part we adjust and grow and even flourish. I wouldn't be a medical professional, a mom of two great kids, and married for 2 decades without having learned a few things along the way--mostly that geeks marry geeks, produce geeky children and continue geeking out on things like video games, Star Wars, and Star Trek. It's a genetic thing, I'm sure.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

How to Decorate a Walker, Geek Style

Late last week, in a fit of frustration that the physical therapist still wasn't allowing me to 'graduate' to using a cane, the kids and I decided the walker required more 'decor'. We took a trip over to Party City for cheap items and supplies (emphasis on 'cheap'). The kids then helped me arrange the various new items on the walker, and we scotch-taped them all in place.
I knew we'd achieved 'Cheezy success' when Trusty Hubby arrived home from work, took one look at it, and declared, "I am NOT going to be seen with THAT in public."
Anyway, here are some pics of the final product.

The front view:

My view--the black thing on the left side is a bulb for a horn. The dog keeps confusing it with his squeaker toy since they sound remarkably alike.

Yes, even the wheels got pimped with some star stickers:

Yes, that is a warp nacelle on the horizontal bar, though it's taken a bit of water damage in the rain over the past few weeks. Of course there's one on the other side, too. You can't be unbalanced on your warp nacelles, you know. That would just be silly. The "One Way" sticker is for those who might possibly be confused about the direction a walker must take (yes, I have that much faith in some peoples' intelligence levels). It works well with the Scooby Doo sticker that my daughter got at the doctor's office after a routine visit. She felt they'd look best right above the wheels.

View of the left side of the walker, including the reflective cardboard blue horn, which I'll save for New Year's noisemaking:

Here's the view of the sign that Trusty Friend Sabretooth created and which we copied, printed out, put in a plastic page protector, and then attached to the walker with left over twisty-ties from loaves of bread. And yes, that is a Pokeball attached to it. There's also some weird creature that is attached on the other side because my daughter 'liked it and thought it would look good there'. I never argue with my 9 year old daughter in matters of taste and decorum.

Of course, no walker would be complete without light up features. You have no idea how hard it was to find a a really cheap battery powered string of flashing lights (emphasis on 'cheap'). Fortunately, the light-up lei worked as a good substitute, and the flashing "Princess" pin looks suitably gaudy when lit up.

Just in case you were dying to know, the Pokeball contains a Shaymin. I know your day would not have been complete without informing you of that fact.

No self-respecting sci-fi geek would be caught dead without a Star Wars Pez dispenser. I was hoping to find a Yoda Pez dispenser, but R2D2 was a good second choice. There are cherry-flavored Pez inside, in case you were just dying to know.

My physical therapist finally graduated me to a cane after laughing hysterically at the added decorations.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Birthday reminders

I was a bad kid. I forgot my Grandma's birthday. Yes, you can whack me profusely about the head and neck with a wet noodle. We should not ever forget the birthdays of our Grandmas. It's not that I forgot when her birthday was--it's June 13th and I didn't even have to consult my Geek Calendar for that. It's the fact that it did not register in my brain that last Wednesday was actually June 13th. I spent the entire day without once considering what the actual date was. I was just happy to remember to pick up my prescription, much less remember anything more significant. The date was also firmly planted in my brain as "Wednesday, the first full day of summer vacation for the kids and four days before my son's birthday and OMG he's turning ten!!!"

Now, I have calendars everywhere, including, but not limited to, all computers, the bedroom, my pocket purse calendar, my iPod, and the kitchen (both wall and fridge). On every one that can be written on, there's an entry on June 13th that says "GRANDMA'S BIRTHDAY!!!!" You would think this would be sufficient as a reminder. Apparently not.

I do have alarms on my computers and iPod, and I could try using those again. However, they're very easy to ignore. They give you a nice little beep or play some pleasant snippet of music, both of which I might hear if I turned down the volume on my iPod to a reasonable level. They're so easy to ignore because they're just too darn polite. The message of these pleasing little beeps and bits of music is this: "Oh, Jae, we're so sorry to disturb your day by intruding upon you with this news. If you would be so kind as to click on the gently blinking icon, which cycles very slowly so as not to overly distress you, we would be most grateful for your momentary attention. We now return you to your previously scheduled Geek activity, and we hope you can forgive us for the inconvenience upon your time."

Of course, I truly appreciate polite alarms, because if I'm in the middle of something, a raucous alarm would scare the snot out of me. This would be bad if I'm actually doing something Important, which is far more often than Jimbo ever thinks happens, but that's another blog subject. Anyhow, the polite alarms are way too easy to forget. The polite little chime rings, I think to myself "Oh, that's nice, a pleasant reminder that Wednesday is the 13th and therefore is Grandma's birthday. Thank you, polite alarm!" Then I get sucked back into whatever is happening at the time, such as driving the van or refereeing the latest child battle over whether it's going to be Lego Star Wars or Star Wars: Battlefront playing on the PS2.

What I really need is something that is less polite. I need something that says, "Hey, you!! Yes, you, Geeky Mom!! It's June 13th! Yes, the 13th of June! You know, 9+4, 10+3, 17-4--that makes it THIR-TEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!!!!! Got it? Well then, go call her for heaven's sake!!!" Then it needs to be hooked into my phone system so that it repeats every 7.2 minutes until I actually call her, at which point it'll say "Glad you finally remembered! See you next year!" That might help me remember a birthday better. Provided I remember to turn on the alarm, that is.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Happy 30th Anniversary of Star Wars

What self-respecting Geeky Mom would not talk about Star Wars on its 30th Anniversary?

I'm old enough to have seen it in 1977 in a movie theater. We only had to wait about half an hour in line for this movie that blew me away. Here was a movie had everything I could want in a movie then--a couple dozen different aliens and droids, lightsaber duels, princess rescues, jumps to hyperspace, space battles, and the good guy winning.

I was in sci-fi heaven from the moment the horns proclaimed the start of the movie and the intro crawled until the final notes of the credits. For those of you who weren't alive during that time, I can't begin to tell you how it felt to be sitting down near the front when the Millenium Falcon (finally) made it to hyperspace, or Luke dodged TiE fighters during the dogfight around Yavin. No one had ever seen anything remotely like it--the closest movie to Star Wars was Logan's Run the year before. The special effects are still stunning today, 30 years later, though DVDs do it about as much justice as eating fake chocolate.

Star Wars let us escape a scary world for a bit. While America suffered through double-digit inflation, the oil crisis, post-Vietnam angst, and the Cold War, George Lucas created magic in that galaxy far, far away. For those 121 all-too-brief minutes, we were transported to an epic space fantasy where we could be Jedi, princesses, scoundrels, and saviors. The movie reminded us during a difficult time that Princesses could be saved, Force-sensitive Jedi could use lightsabers , crusty scoundrels had hearts, and the Good Guy triumphed over evil in the end.

This was the first movie ever where people would camp out on the sidewalk just to get tickets. In a time when people went to movies twice at the most, people went to see the movie 10, 15, 20 times to see the jump to hyperspace, the lightsaber duel, or the final battle. Nothing ever had come close to creating that kind of fan devotion. It was in the news for months, and books, toys, and a host of other items filled store shelves. Much to the chagrin of etiquette experts, our traditional greeting changed from 'Hello, how are you?" to "Hi, have you seen Star Wars yet?" The movie reminded us during a difficult time that Princesses could be saved, Jedi could use the mystical Force, crusty scoundrels had hearts, and the Good Guy triumphed over evil in the end.

Thanks, George, for giving us A New Hope.