Two things came up at Thanksgiving dinner this year that I wanted to talk about. One was my "blog" and the other was video games. I prefer to refer to it as a journal, but it is what is, so it is a blog. I sort of defended the existence of my journal by saying that I started it because I wanted to practice writing to keep my skills from decaying. That is actually true, although there is another reason.

I find when I get angry or into an argument, I often become incoherent. It's not that the ideas are unclear to me, in fact, I find just the opposite: the ideas are so clear in my head that I don't stop to explain key points that need to be made. If I take my time and write down my reasoning for a particular position I find that I can be much more persuasive, or at least less nervous if the subject should come up in a conversation. I have strong opinions, but I tend to be non-confrontational.

Take the other subject at dinner: video games. In the 7th grade I wrote an essay about why video games were good that was so coherent and well written that my no-good English teacher Mr. Farley wrongly accused my mother of having written it. My father felt that I spent too much time playing video games and tried to dissuade me from doing so. In the long term he didn't alter my behavior, I think that he was wrong to try, and I don't think that my interest in video games has stunted my personal growth. I hardly play video games at all anymore, but I do not regret the time I invested in them.

At dinner, one of the guests said that video games were bad because you don't use your own imagination. Since I tend to be non-confrontational in person, I didn't contradict the guest. While it is sort of a personal reasoning, and may not be relevant to everyone's experience, I'd like to explain why I disagree here for the record, and so that in the future I have a coherent line of reasoning for arguing the subject.

(Why video games can be good...)

On Friday, I was doing the laundry and they were playing the Beetles song "Hello, Goodbye." This made me laugh after the previous entry because this song reminds me of another old friend from my past. I won't go into the details, but in elementary school my best friend (at the time) "gUe" and I performed a skit to this song for the Aspen School talent show. It was by far the most creative performance that day, although I can't really take credit for that... the idea had been gUe's mom, who seemed to like the idea of putting us in the talent show.

I thought this was funny, because earlier in the day the song Ruiner had reminded me of another old friend (see previous entry), and I have been thinking about old friends a lot lately. Old friends in this context meaning anyone I was friends with before I moved to New York. I had been thinking also about how I don't keep in touch with anyone from the Los Alamos period in my life to talk to them about these thoughts, but then I remembered that I was going to Philly to see my friend Mike, who goes all the way back to my junior year at high school.

Just last year, he married a nice girl named Sarah who is also from Los Alamos; although I'd never met her until I went down to see Mike this weekend. So I had a bit of Home Town Overload, although it was surprisingly nice. I was pleased with myself because I recognized their wedding photographs as being taken at the White Rock Overlook, which incidentally was also featured in the film Silverado.

Mike was having a summer BBQ/party and I got to meet many of his friends and coworkers. A few of whom I had met the couple of times I have seen Mike since I moved here. He has very nice friends. They are all of the married/have young children age group... which I don't quite relate to yet. I only know one married couple who plan to have children, and that is still some time away. Anyway I was glad to go down there.

Next weekend I go to Maine!