god games

What is it about those crazy little "god games" that is so addicting? Games like SIMS, Age of Empires, FarmVille, Farm Town... OY! There are a ton of these crazy games where a person can build a city/hometown/farm etc and then try to make it "successful". What's the point? There is no way to win the game. One never saves the princess or a planet. Usually one gets so immerced in the game that the gravity well created by the game quickly pulls in friends as well. My guess is that the government is using these games to send people subliminal messages and has incorporated some urgent need to return to the game or play through lunch/dinner/bedtime so that they can make sure we get the full force of their brain washing. In fact, the government is playing their own little god game! Huh. I can't ... remember where I ... going with this... Oh! My potatoes need to be harvested on my little virtual farm. Gotta go!

Quote - Tom Masson

Quote in Print

About Tomas Lansing Masson

Let's Get Out Our Toning Bands -or- How I Enjoyed My Breakfast Even More

This morning I was watching the Today Show on NBC. Since I hadn't had breakfast yet and it is supposed to be the most important meal of the day, I fixed something easy to eat during a commercial break. WELL. I should have gotten out my toning bands because as I ate my giant double chocolate chip Costco muffin which I had just heated and melted REAL BUTTER on top, the Today Show aired a segment about back fat. Al even cracked a joke about eating to much fat back (bacon). I didn't realize I needed to be so concerned about back fat. Apparently it is the sneaky thing that causes all health problems, along with bras and t-shirts not to fit. If you do the magic exercises twice a day for two to three weeks the fat will magically melt away. HMMMM. I know I'm a bit over weight, but I've only recently been uncomfortable with it - in an achy physical way, not the OMG SHE IS FAT social pressure way. Our society is so concerned with being thin and with the economy and yet keeping up with the proverbial Jones' - I'm thinking these all are symptoms of the really disease: asophrosyne - the lack of self control. (I got a B in Ancient Greek, however, it really seems we are missing sophrosyne... I decided that adding the "a" for lacking was the best way to go about this. I feel in better shape and more educated now that I wrote that and all thanks to a segment about back fat). Here we are, over weight, in debt up to our eyeballs watching television about what we need to buy to have the best picnic/social standing/success in life. I wonder if that is how my double chocolate ginormous muffin became so especially delicious. :)

Sophrosyne (σωφροσύνη)

a Greek philosophical term

e t y m o l o g i c a l l y

meaning moral sanity and

from there self control

or moderation guided by

true self-knowledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophrosyne

Pocky

Pocky - it's a delicious Japanese treat that I found at a local asian food market. My son, who is just a year and half old, loves this treat as much as I. In fact, he's recently added "pocky" to his little vocabulary... next thing you know he'll be saying OREO :)

Eeehhhh, lets back up a bit here... it's not that I feed my small children a diet consisting primarily of chocolaty items. It's this strange genetic trait that my children have inherited from me - I can hear/smell/sense high calorie, fatty, delicious edibles being opened or being brought in my vicinity. While my kids are still honing their skills (sometimes my daughter comes running up saying, "Can I have some?!" when she hears me opening the mail) I can usually tell what's being opened or if its milk or dark chocolate. Meanwhile, all attempts to ignor said edibles creates a craving for the item.

Imagine working in a large room the size of a grocery store filled with cubicles and people on the phone. Now, think about how many of those people are snacking on something completely naughty when you consider the USDA food pyramid. You willingly submit yourself to employment there for eight plus hours a day trying not to think about the slightly overdone popcorn two rows over, the vanilla cake with cream cheese frosting ten cubes behind you and three rows over, and just over the cube wall, someone is eating mini chocolate donuts. HOW COULD YOU NOT GAIN FORTY POUNDS?! I've since escaped to a world where I'm the one bringing in the Oreos, frozen chocolate fudgesicles, pinto beans, spinach and Pocky.

Better Late Than Never

(I am reposting this from my original blog 5/28/08 because I liked writing it and I made eggs this morning)

My husband of nearly five years surprised me. Not in a randomly bringing flowers kind of way. This was more of an I-can’t-believe-you-waited-this-long-to-tell-me kind of surprise.

When we first got married, we both worked, but I tried hard to be a good little housewife – you know, always have fresh towels in the bathroom, never run out of socks or coffee or toilet paper, and make my new hubby breakfast every morning.

Breakfast turned out to be harder than I thought. We have very different opinions on eggs. I like my scrambled, as an omelet, or over hard. Fully cooked is the most important part as I don’t really enjoy eggs, especially un-disguised eggs. Ian however, loves runny yokes with wheat toast to dip in them after he’s eaten the fried whites. I worked hard to perfect the runny yoked happiness of eggs and made them for him once a week in the breakfast rotation. When Charsia was born, I started slacking off on the breakfast thing even more than I had while I was pregnant, so he probably has fried eggs once, maybe twice a month now. You may be surprised at the ways I have accidently found to ruin the eggs, but at least eighty percent of the time he gets his happy eggs over easy with buttered wheat toast to dip in the yokes.

This morning I set his breakfast down for him at his desk where he’s already working. He looks at the food and then up at me and pauses. Then he says, “Hon….” He looks down at his breakfast of coffee, toast, yogurt and nearly perfect eggs (one of the yokes broke) again.

“What?” I ask cautiously. I can’t guess what he is about to say but I know when he pauses and makes that face, he is feeling awkward.

“Uh…” Another pause. “I uh, don’t really like fried eggs hon.”

I must be giving him a blank look.

“I mean thanks for making these for me but I really don’t like fried eggs.” He picks up part of the egg’s white and tugs at it a little for emphasis. “I mean, if I am going to eat fried eggs, this is the way I like them.” As if that was going to console me for the years of egg making.

“But I thought you liked eggs over easy! That’s why I work so hard to make them that way – SO YOU CAN DIP YOUR TOAST IN THE YOKES. Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I start to walk away then turn and come back to lean over the desk and start laughing (I think I am making him nervous with the laughter). “We’ve been married nearly five years and you are finally breaking this to me?”

It turns out he likes almost all variations of scrambled eggs (I know you were wondering). It wasn’t like he told me that his name wasn’t really Ian, or that his other wife makes the fried eggs better. I may have over reacted. Now that I don’t have to try so hard on the eggs any more, they don’t seem that bad… Maybe I will make them for him next week. I’m sure that they will turn out perfect now that they aren’t his favorite.

Titles I considered for this post:

You Think You Know a Person

Deviled Eggs

Devil's Eggs

Fried Eggs and Hon

An "inspirational saying about grammar"

Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression.

- Amos Bronson Alcott

US educator Transcendentalist (1799 - 1888)

I just don't see how that inspires one to aspire to greatness by use of grammar...

Inspiration

There's something about a fresh, clean, high quality, unmarked peice of paper. Something about the texture, the color... it gives me the feeling that I'm about to write something wonderful.