and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Last night I played helicopter. It's a dumb little flash game that I've mentioned before.

Unfortunately, all of my friends suffer from obessesive compulsive disorder and therefore, upon learning of this game helicopter, they all became bent on ruling the world.. or at least getting the high score.

The game was originally presented on someone's weblog with a statement citing their best score of 2148. At the time it was a big number. It's not the easiest game - it's sort of mindnumbing - but after some time playing the game you come to realize that 2148 is certainly a doable number.. with patience.

Anyhow, as I played last night I thought about my poor friend Alex. Alex is a graduate student who is currently in the process of writing a master's thesis. He is also my ex-suitemate from my freshman year in college and I am aware of his serious video-gaming problems. That is to say he is among those that I have stated above: he is OCD.

I know worse. I know a guy who will call someone 20, 30, 40 times in one day if he wants to get in touch and they aren't answering their phone.. even when he knows they have caller ID. He is, shall we say, a tad crazy. Alex pales in comparison..

But even Alex could not fight off the compulsion that is helicopter. When it was first posted to our friendly mailinglist under the subject:

fun fun fun

Alex was soon to reply with:

yeah, motherfucker. unless you feel that you absolutely must break that guys record of 2148, only to miss by a mere 96 points. one and one half hour all told. shitballs.

Another frustrated friend Tom, to many chuckles, wrote:

In an extremely covert, and very slooooow helicopter mission over a Greenland, pilot Thomas Scanlon merged with the infinite this afternoon at a distance of 2052 arbitrary units. With the end of his mission in sight, a vile and unprovoked green enemy floating somewhat paradoxically in mid-air struck with such a surreptitious force that although crashing sounds could be heard, and it was obvious that the pilot's life had ended during a brief respite for both gravity and space-time, no contact between plane and floating green rectangle could be detected. Amazingly, the helicopter became instantly immobile although suffering no damage to its outer shell. Officials from Air Force intelligence remain hopeful that information regarding the enemy weaponry could be ascertained from the glowing red energy field deployed in the instant following the collision.

An accomplished pilot, Thomas had about a half an hour of experience with this aircraft. Friends rumored that in recent minutes he thought of giving up
helicopter piloting all together, saying, "this game sucks, but it beats work". In the end, it was his cocky attitude that led him to such daring stunts over enemy territory. In a qwerky twist of fate an unidentified source claimed that just minutes before the incident he was heard saying, "I'm going to beat that freekin' high score if it kills me". In the final transmission heard by ground control Thomas intimated that he, "regretted not sending more emails to his friends in recent months" and "would surely change my ways if only I had the chance". A brave hero, he will be sorely missed.

A brave rescue mission was assigned to Brian:

A Canadian rescue helicopter failed to reach the crash site of a US Air Force helicopter this evening, when it collided with a floating green enemy some three hundred arbitrary units before the believed site of the US crash.

The Canadian helicopter was sent out to search for any survivors of the bizarre crash, which occured earlier this afternoon, and to locate and retrieve the American helicopter's black box, which the US Air Force hopes will contain information that would help officials unravel the mysteries surrounding this unusual incident. That the Canadian effort met with a fate almost identical to that of the US pilot Thomas Scanlon is a source of considerable consternation to officials of both nations, who are working together to investigate the precise nature of these green bogeys, and their relationship, if any, to Greenland military, which has traditionally been a close ally of the United States. A Greenland military official offered his condolences to the families and countries of the fallen pilots, but refused to comment on the green shapes which caused their deaths.

Although several countries offered their support for the rescue operation, it was decided that the Canadian pilot Brian Gabor would fly the mission due to his extensive (if not excessive) familiarity with the terrain and the operation of the rescue aircraft. Gabor had previously penetrated Greenland to an unofficial distance of over 2300 arbitrary units, but was unable to repeat that feat on this occasion. Luckily he has an infinite number of lives, and vows to sacrifice as many of them as are necessary to bring his mission to a successful conclusion.

A memorial service for the fallen incarnation of Brian will be held at his house this evening, where his current incarnation and several of his friends will undertake to tie one on in his memory, while not, of course, neglecting to pour one on the curbside for the homies.

Brian soon followed this up with:

Just minutes after one of his previous incarnations came within three hundred arbitrary units of the site where US helicopter pilot Thomas Scanlon went down over Greenland, a newer, better Brian Gabor managed to reach the site. Finding absolutely no evidence of a crash, Gabor continued his search to the incredible distance of 2210 arbitrary units, at which point his fuel ran out and he crashed ignominiously into the Greenland tundra.

Military officials are puzzled by the missing remains of the US aircraft. No traces were found of the glowing red energy field which US satellite sources had detected at the moment of the crash.

Sick of writing press releases, however, Canadian military officials have refused to provide any more information on the subject, and say the case is closed. Critics charge that this silence hints at an epic cover-up, but naturally they are powerless to do anything about it.

Further discussion was added later by Lisa:

okay. helicopter game must go. it is giving me the jimmy legs and arms. i actually have the shakes. and get all nervous. and all for a personal best score of a pitiful 1400+. damn!

I replied:

Well, let's just face the facts. Women just were not built, evolutionarily speaking, for repetitive finger clicking and wrist pivoting - aka video gaming. Extensive research has shown that, despite the larger "funbags" females often exhibit hanging from their chestable areas, they are in fact not set up for the protective role that males play in the societal makeup of the homosapien. Males, however, have developed a number of unique characteristics over the years to aid in their protective nature towards the females of the species. For one, they have developed special "pouches" on their foresides on which to set the weapon of choice - preferrably a 4 to 6 button "Joy"stick, or gamepad. Also, they have developed lightening fast reflexes to ward off the excess of rabid turtles, ninjas, fighter jets, and football men that tend to infest the boxes kept in many homosapien living areas. In many tribes the male's ability to protect his female from these dangers is a matter of social status and competitions are often held. It is also not unheard of for a male to wrestle the beast zapper away from a female and ward her away from the box in which the beasts live, for her protection, of course. All is not violent, however, as the males of a tribe can sometimes be seen huddled around the beast box observing the creatures and discussing the relative merits of the different beasts and how best to go about dealing with them.

And finally Alex put the period on the end of the sentence, so to speak, with this message:

Peace, none the less. 2516. I need no longer prove anything to any of you, or to anyone else, regarding anything related to helicopters. Though perhaps this score is braggable, my message is not intended as such. I simply relay the message that peace is in your reach, perhaps aided in part by a pair of rotating blades.

namaste (i bow to the divine in you),
alex

Anyhow.. back to my original point. Last night I was, once again, playing this retched helicopter game. It was a brief outting simply to pass a few minutes while I waited for my food to be ready so I didn't do much in the score department. I did, however, have an idea.

I whipped out MS Paint and took a screen capture of the game. I played a few times in order to get a few screen captures with various scores. You can guess where this is going.. I spliced together a score of over 4500 and placed it in the original screen capture under "best score". I sent it to Alex.

Some might call me wicked. Some might call me evil.. but what more does Alex need in his time of thesis writing than a good diversion? Like, say, a diversion that will keep him up all night pulling his hair out in an attempt to do the undoable.. beat my non-existent score. Ha. Muhaha. Hahahaa. Okay. So I am evil.

Alex responded to my screenshot with the following:

I hope you die. You just got lucky, because the only time that I ever crash is when it's impossible to get through. Bitch.

alex

I'm not sure if I set the hook well though I feel the fish tugging at the worm so I wrote him back:

Impossible? IMPOSSIBLE?

I think it's clear what is impossible here Alex.

You EVER being cool.

unless you beat my score.

(I've included a link directly to the helicopter game so you can
attempt to regain some of your manhood:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/helicopter.shtml)

Michael

Hopefully he'll bite..

hopefully.