If you’re an English speaking person (which I, evidently, am not), I’d suggest you go for “I’m learning Spanish.” Or French. You’ll never need them, so who will find out?! Have you any idea how much time Asians spend trying to learn English each year?! And what about those drug or sex addicts in rehab?
I say, if you don’t have REAL addictions, you’re entitled to good-old-fashioned procrastination, it’s free and harmless (mainly to others).
I believe that at 36, I’ve spent approximately a ninth of my life playing TETRIS. In fact, I know the drill so well that I can play it by heart now: I learned to bypass the conscious brain when connecting my hands to my eyes, so they're able to work out the blank spaces and proper rotations on their own. This saves me up to 70% of GMP (Grey Matter Power).
This is great, because it gives me a lot of time and energy to lateral-think. I love lateral-thinking (with or without pot), it’s the pink couch in the middle of my comfy-zone. There are no bad ideas in lateral-thinking, how cute is that, huh?! The trick is to forget everything you know and use the opposite hemisphere to solve your problems. If it’s maths, draw. If it’s of a moral nature... I don't know... dance. Lower your GMP, it's the closest thing we Westerners have to real meditation.
And if you’ve no problems at all, use lateral thinking to create some; people will appreciate that you’re a suffering asshole like everybody else.
Screen snapshot of one of grandma's TETROLLAPSE games. She liked the result so much that she decided to knit me a sweater with that pattern. TETRIS is a great teacher of mine, my guru in a Mighty-Favog-kind-of-way (although when he says “It’s gonna cost yah!” he doesn’t mean “Chick’ns”, he means “Time”. Yay! Where the hell could I get chick’ns from 2 to 6 am in Barcelona?! But as for Time, I get a free 24-hour-ration every day, plus a 24-hour bonus every four years, if I don’t lose count. Boy, ain’t it cheap to be alive?).
I read somewhere that TETRIS is being prescribed to patients who suffer from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). I’m not kidding; it seems that when you’ve been through a traumatic experience, your brain needs to playback the torturing scene over and over in your head to numb the pain and save you from potential new traumas by confining you to bed for a long time.
That same part of the brain (I can’t remember which) is the one you exercise when playing TETRIS, because it also regulates the mental rotating and translating of objects in space. So scientists discovered that PTSD patients would eventually replace the mental reruns of car crashes, rapes and extended episodes of "Lost" with endless rows of squares, L’s and Z’s, rotating and falling within a rectangular container to the rhythm of an obnoxious MIDI version of Ivan Petrovich Larionov's "Kalinka". How harmful can that be, right?
It’s not surprising that the “Quilmes Psychiatric Hospital” has sponsored the winning team in the last TETRIS World Cup held in February 2008 in Buenos Aires. I heard they gave their representatives colored wristbands and matching toe tags (just in case) with the hospital's logo on them. The team was awarded a check for 10.000 Argentine pesos, which the doctors immediately took away from their patients’ twitching hands to invest in medical equipment and, of course, to keep them all traumatized and warmed-up for next season.
Not that any of this would take the fun out of MY TETRIS. Maybe I’m overcompensating for a childhood trauma I haven’t dealt with in time; hey, now that I come to think of it, this might have saved my parents loads of money. I'll make a note of that before I forget.
The following are but a few things that I’ve learned from master TETRIS. I wish my grandma would have come up with these when I was a kid, it would have saved me lots of trouble. Then again, she grew up playing with dolls, Scrubble and Domino; what good can come out of those lame games remains a deep mystery to me.
1. If it’s too late to change your mind, DON’T EVEN TRY!
Have you ever tried placing a piece in the right spot at the very last second? It’ll screw it all up, trust me, you’ll never stick it there on time. The piece is coming down fast, you know you’re missing the right spot and your mind starts yelling “Go for it, you cow!” as your guts twist and turn fixing your fingers in place. It makes you wonder if you’ve always been all thumbs (which alas! doesn't help in this particular game). Face it, the only reason you want to try for that unreachable spot is because you’ll never forgive yourself if you don't.
Well, guess what? WRONG MOVE!
You’d better paralyze, it’s natural so it must be good for you. Heed your guts, allow yourself to look like a mindless idiot as you clear up your mind for the next piece. It ain’t that bad, even the soldier with his finger on the trigger does it when facing death… And don’t waste your remaining GPM cursing yourself as your piece falls inexorably into your self-created doom. It’s a lose-lose situation, so choose the lesser loss and act as if you knew what you were doing all the time, people might buy it; nobody argues with a genius or a mad man, so how would they know the difference? Jeez, I always wondered that…
Here, I'll make it simple: if Chaos Theory has taught me anything, it’d be that “Errors are accumulative”, like innocent snowflakes. If you already pressed the “SEND” button on your cell phone, don’t try cancelling it now, you gawky dwarf!! Either you’ll get your phone busted or the recipient will get half of an illegible message. He/she will eventually fill in the blanks and make out the right characters (those suckers can be really bright when they want to) and will KNOW that you tried to cancel the sending because you haven’t got the guts to say what you really mean, whatever it was. Worst case scenario, you’ll get a late reply reading “Got a garbled text from you this morning. Stuck your thumb in butter or are you on drugs again, you creep?”
Btw, I just came across this article on "How to retract or recall an email sent by mistake"
http://www.ehow.com/how_4881362_email-sent-mistake-microsoft-outlook.html
Can you believe that?! Mighty Favog, what's becoming of humanity?!
Listen to me: don’t ever, I mean E*V*E*R, retract. Use paralysis as an asset. Keep your mind clear for the next piece and place it right this time. Snowflakes melt easier than snowballs, everybody knows that.
2. It doesn’t matter how deeply you want it, IF IT’S THE WRONG SHAPE, IT WON’T FIT!
This is a tricky one and it's cost me way too many games. Like some of you, I used to believe that what I think shapes the world. My ass! Things are what they are and they’re clearly shaped and groomed by Objective Reality; your faith won’t turn water into wine, so if you want to get drunk, go to a bar.
3. KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE FALLING PIECE
Don’t take it for granted, even though you’re sure that it will fit this time, something is very likely to happen that will screw it all up: a slight twitch of the hand, an unwanted pressing of the button, a phone call, a sneeze… There are many variables in life that can affect the outcome of your move, so don’t think you’ve got it all under control or you’re dead meat.
Haven't I told you the story about the goose and the anaesthesiologist? Well, maybe some other time…
4. TAKE A QUICK PEEK AT THE UPCOMING PIECE
This is crucial; knowing which piece’s coming up next is the key to success. It’s also kind of weird, because something that’ll actually take place in the future is determining the rightness of you current action. In real life this is what some call “Karma”. Karma means “Action”. Your actions in the past determine where and who you are now, and what’s stored for you in the future determines where and who you are now, too.
Hang on… I’m not sure this makes sense.
Ok: what you do now affects who you are, same as what you don’t do. And you are what other people do and don’t do to you, the same way as you are what you do and don’t do to others, now or in the past.
Rrrright, that’s Karma.
So… if you’re the result of your own actions and inactions as well as others’ actions and inactions upon you… man, you’re everything. Which is exactly what the Buddhists say.
Now, can anyone explain to me why people don’t make the most of this “coming next” feature in real life?! Granted, the next piece isn’t necessarily in plain view as it is on the TETRIS screen, but it’s surely out there somewhere, you’ve just got to search for it. It often takes the shape of a bomb about to explode… like when your lover says “I’ve had enough of this shit” and strides out the door carrying a half-closed suitcase. I bet that -in retrospect- you’ll find zillions of warning signs all over the place; you should have paid more attention, you should have known that this was going to happen, thus changing your current behaviour pattern and making it impossible for your partner to leave you.
Like stealing his/her suitcase or gluing the door to the frame.
I mean, if you can put together the pieces now that your partner’s gone, well jeez!, he/she must have left them there for you some time ago, right?! How come you've never seen them?!
I know this is deep… it's one of the hardest truths I acquired from playing my computer and I can't still wrap my mind around it.
In any case, if you’re one of those jerks who can’t take their eyes off the Present Road and have “Carpe Diem” embroidered on their lapels, I’d suggest you enjoy this TETRIS "coming next" feature as much as you can; don’t take it as “cheating”, but as a magic power you’re entitled to in the Realm of Play (that’s what I do).
5. BEWARE OF THE SQUARE!
That's what grandma used to say (I swear I never understood what she meant until I started playing TETRIS).
Any player will tell you that the Square is the most troublesome piece. Why? Well, quite simple, really... It's got double symmetry. Which means, it looks the same whether you rotate it vertically or horizontally. Which in turn means, that there is NO WAY you can reason with it, shape it the way you need it to, or at least, soften its edges to diminish the damage of against-the-grain penetration. A square is WHAT IT IS, no matter how you look at it, no matter how right you are, no matter how delicate the situation is. You could say it's the fundamentalist character in the party, the spoiled rotten child of the family, the General Batista of the gameboard.
As much as I would want to free the universe from this kind of garbage, I am alas! but a humble player, forced to do my best with the hand I've been dealt. Look around you, dear reader: those squares are everywhere, raining down on your parade, demanding you save a proper place for them in your life or deal with the consequences of your "neglect". Those suckers will force their way through and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, save bending the knee and keeping that gap wiiiiide open.
I've met a few players who seriously think that the Square is the voice of God. "It teaches you to be humble!" they say. "It's Perfect. Eternal, impervious to time, change, and even prayer!".
Hm, somehow that kind of makes sense to me.
"Look at it this way..." others would point out: "In the end, what are ALL the Tetrominos made of, huh? Well yeah, of course, of little Squares! The Square is the origin, the Square is the cell, the spinal cord of the TETRIS entity".
Ok, I'm not a fundamentalist, I see what they're getting at with this. Square is fair, I guess... Who knows??! Perhaps they ARE the key element in this masterful set of rules; the secret ingredient to keep luring people all over the world to leave their families and riches behind and rejoicing day-in and day-out in the nonsensical pleasure of play. Things would soon get a bit bored without those blue suckers around... And I guess we all need a ration of Destiny shoved up our butts to truly appreciate Free Will, right?
Whichever the case, whatever my belief at any given period of my pathetic life, after each overdose of TETRIS on long wintery nights, I would go to bed with a tingling sensation falling into the spiral structure of my ears... that sweet whispering voice would come to me, like an unforgettable 80s-pop tune: "Beware of the Square, my child! Beware of the Squaaaaare!"
Thank you, granny. Shakespeare couldn't have put it any better than this.
Unfaced friends, only addiction beats addiction. If you suffer from PTSD, anxiety, compulsive hand-twitching or time overdose, give master TETRIS a chance. Look, I’m posting a link to the best online TETRIS page below so you won’t even have to google it.
Procrastinate away, fellas! Who knows? Wisdom may come out of it someday…
Yours unlawfully,
Pinker Mint
The following space is reserved for paid ads:
> PLAY ALL KINDS OF TETRIS ONLINE FOR FREE AND FOREVER AT
http://www.tetrisgames4all.com/
> IF YOU SUFFER FROM TETRIS ADDICTION, GET IN TOUCH WITH OUR SPECIALISTS RIGHT NOW AT:
Quilmes Psychiatric Hospital
Carlos Pellegrini 1628
C.P. 1818
Quilmes, Provincia de Buenos Aires
Argentina
24/7 Emergency Helpline: +54 11 542 34636
But don't mind phoning, we disconnected the line because it was too distracting.
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