I Was Retweeted by a Celebrity ...But At What Cost?

For those of us on twitter, we know that exposure is exciting.  People love to have a lot of people following them, and the more influential people you have reading your tweets, the 'cooler' you are.

I follow a handful of celebrities, politicians and other 'popular' people, and from time to time, respond to some of their tweets.  I normally just do my own thing, either pimping my blog or saying silly things in hopes for retweets or stars.

You know, just screwing around.

I was on twitter Tuesday night and saw a tweet from Adrianne Curry.  She was talking about her future relationship possibilities, and if she would ever marry again.  I chipped in my two cents:

Well, she read my tweet.  She liked my tweet.  And she retweeted:

I was floored.

And I was joking around, but I used to play online games.  Kids do indeed cut into gaming and raid times, since they require constant attention and you can't really ignore them for 4+ hours.

When someone with 320k followers retweets you, people talk.  Suddenly I had over a dozen people retweeting my message, and even more adding their own quips on my tweet.  Most agreed with me, and added humor of their own.

With that said, I'm stoked.  My Klout score is going to go through the roof (yes, I still use klout, and no, I don't know why either...)

Yet.... I don't want people to get the wrong idea.  I love my kids.  I regret some stupid things I did in the past, like putting video games ahead of my family from time to time.  Looking back, gaming cost me a lot of precious moments and I'm not ok with that.  My boys matter to me more than any game ever could.

But they do cut into raid times.  If you'd rather be gaming, kids aren't for you.

Good news though!  As they get older, the perfect combo emerges!

I WILL PWN JOO!!1!1!!

Video games WITH your kids!  As an 80's/90's kid, I'm looking forward to the day where my boys and I can play together, trash talking (in a family friendly way, of course) and taking turns whooping each other.

So Adrianne.  Much love for the RT, and I wish you nothing but happiness, epic loot, and orgasms a-plenty.  But kids aren't nearly as overrated as my tweet says.

Old School Gaming, and the Hidden Messages Within

I don't really have a lot of time to play video games, but when I do, I like playing the classics.  Don't get me wrong, some of the newer games out there are flat-out amazing, but I think it's more fun to play a 25 year-old version of Mega Man than I do fragging some newbs in Halo.

I have a Wii, and recently went on a buying spree for some old NES, Sega, and Super Nintendo games.  I picked up the original Legend of Zelda, Super Mario 1-3, a few SNES games, and one of the most difficult games I've ever played, Fantasy Zone.

Fantasy Zone is an old game for the Sega Master System (before the Genesis) and was one of the first games I ever played.  To this day, I still can't beat the game.  If you have a Wii (or an emulator on your PC) I challenge you to try it... it'll make you rage...

One of the fun things I noticed was the wonder of 8-bit games on a 40" Hi-Def television.  I was playing Super Mario Brothers when I noticed this:

At the end of the first 7 levels, you defeat the boss, and a little mushroom tells you "Thank you Mario, but the princess is in another castle."

I paused the game.

"Wait a second, is that little fucker flipping me off?"

And what do you know, he was...

Instead of being sincere and telling me to go to the next level, he's saying "BAHAHAHA, you got PUNKED, bro!  Try again!"

That mushroom bastard...

What's funny is I'm playing these games with no delay or interruption.  I remember being 8/9/10 years old and having to blow into the NES cartridges to make sure all the connectors were free of dust.  Then insert the game.  Hit power.  Wait.  Didn't work?  Pull out, blow some more, try again.  With the Wii, it's almost.... anticlimactic...

Half the fun of playing the games was getting your machine to work.  It made you feel like an engineer, saying "There.  *I* fixed it" when nobody else could...

Oh well.  Saved the princess.  Now off to Hyrule next, to see if I remember all the hidden things in Zelda.  Huzzah!!!