I realised recently that I have a habit of, automatically and subconsciously, saying “Have fun!” to someone as we say goodbye or part company. I’m not exactly sure where I picked this up from (it was @tweetjard, quite possibly), but it’s an interesting observation to make about something that I do on an almost daily basis without even noticing.
I kind of say it almost like it’s an order: HAVE FUN ON PAIN OF DEATH OR FEEL WRATH OF EIGHT THOUSAND ORC SPEARS. Or, something along those lines, anyway.
Having fun is genuinely one of the few things that I try to take into every endeavour that I undertake; whether it’s just making everyday tasks (cleaning, cooking) a bit more interesting by introducing mini-games to the process, by making little jokes in my head to force a smile from myself, or by making up little challenges/quests to lighten the mood of menial tasks. Such games might be trying to trying tea bags into the mug from four paces across the kitchen as if I’m playing darts (inspired by the scene from Would I Lie to You?), pretending that my spreadsheet data-entry is actually some sort of secret code-breaking operation and that I only have twelve minutes to fill the sheet before the circular saw kicks into gear to chop the princess into tiny pieces, or treating the car wash like some sort of mechanical Moby Dick into which I must plunge and emerge the other side (presumably out of the blow-hole; I don’t know, I’m not a whale expert).
But yeah, having fun is important.
Maybe it’s this mentality that explains why games and the concept of hold such fascination for me; as if there’s some sort of microchip in my cerebrum that responds to the process of amusement and/or challenge and finds something to do with the 50% of my brain that isn’t occupied by the (menial) task at hand. Just in the procedure of everyday existence, my brain devises cunning challenges or games to subtly (perhaps, imperceptibly) relieve some of the tedium of life’s more mundane facets. I’m just always looking for ways to make light of things, or inject a dose of silliness directly into the veins of humdrum normality; probably to the annoyance of my friends, who’re probably way bored of playing Yellow Car by now.
It’s things like that, though, that make me sort of worry that I’m a bunch more immature and frivolous for someone that is thirty years old and pretending at being a grown-up. It’s true; I can, oftentimes, be immature and childish and with feet fairly firmly planted in the pursuits of empty-headed things, holding a very adolescent sense of humour and what amuses/entertains me. Should I feel guilty that my always-on brain is drawn to geek culture, video games and music rather than a desire to learn about architecture, politics and art? I’m much more at home being sat in front of a games console than a library desk; and I’d be far the most uncomfortable person at a dinner party, were I ever invited to one. Do I cling too much to youth and not growing up?
I dunno, probably.
I’ve always been a bit like this, but the mentality for looking for “fun” in the context of tedium was first planted when I worked in retail before I properly embarked on this whole “academic career” thing. Only when one has had to work in customer services can one truly develop a true contempt and bitterness for the everyday public; where, often, the only way to stop oneself from going truly insane is to occupy the brain with anything that’ll distract from the mind-eroding numbness of dealing with the human hordes. For me, it was dreaming up secret personas and characters for all of the customers that would stop by, or mentally trying out object combinations for point-and-click adventure games in my head to test out when I got back home. [Yes, I know I’m a sad case but, at the time, I thought I was achingly cool so shut up].
Part of my [s]ill[i]ness is also that I just can’t turn my brain off – it’s always running, always thinking; always processing. It’s always computing about how something can be optimised, or light-heartedness placed in a gap where there is none: fr’instance, navigating a busy shopping centre (with people dashing around in different directions at different speeds) causing my psyche to enter ‘Senna Mode’, looking for the “gap” and the quickest way of navigating the imaginary zombie hordes. [Granted, I am usually doing so with the end goal of reaching Forbidden Planet in the shortest possible time, so I guess I have fair incentive to shortcut through the shuffling masses, but that’s not the point.]
What I’m saying is: fun is everywhere. Sometimes it’s presented to you in the form of a neatly-packaged medium that directly provides entertainment or amusement; sometimes, you just need to use your imagination to find a way to inject some silliness into the proceedings.
Godspeed to that.
Anyway, speaking of zombies hordes and childish pursuits and more conventional packages of “fun”, I’m pleased to report that I finished my time with MediEvil earlier this week; putting to bed the minor guilt of having it sat on my shelf, unplayed for so many years. Broadly, I had a good time (at least, when the appalling controls and horrifying camera weren’t trying to pitch me into oblivion at every opportunity), but it did remind me how much I enjoy[ed] the kind of 3D action-adventure/platform games of the PlayStation era that have kind of fallen out of favour: there’s an innocent charm in being an skeletal knight, barrelling around a cartoonish, Hallowe’en Town-esque gothic world with blocky textures and atrocious collision detection and terrible voice acting.
I now kind of have a hankering to follow it up with starting Pandemonium! again and hammer the shit out of some baddies by jumping on their heads, because Pandemonium! was pretty much the dictionary definition of “relentless, innocent fun”. I spent many, many hours of my childhood ploughing through the pseudo-3D platforming world of Lyr, bouncing on creatures’ heads and trying not to fall off platforms into pits of endless oblivion. Hopefully, though, I’m better at it than I was eighteen years ago; because, eighteen years ago, I was FUCKING TERRIBLE AT IT.
[tl;dr: Pandemonium! was awesome. You should play Pandemonium!.]
Anyway, I’ve talked quite a lot here when both of us could totally be doing something way more entertaining than a Friday blog talking about the merits of inventing your own jokes and mini-games, so I’ll move myself on.
HAVE FUN.
[Zinar7]
Sinister Resistance 