Monday 10 May 1999

Screenshot

Pic of the day: My latest Daggerfall character, Anita. (No offense to all the nice people who actually bear that name in the real world...) I'm testing out a whole new way of playing, for all purposes abolishing the notion of character classes.

I tried to upload a thorough discussion of the new play style to my Daggerfall Crossroads site, but it was down. I've been there just a few days ago, so I hope it's only temporary. If not, I should be forced to relocate it to another server. I hate rotten links as much as you.

I have noticed that my roleplaying characters seem to be almost as often female as male. And I play them with their clothes on, too... I once read in a psychology textbook that women's dreams (at night) include approximately as many men as women, while men dream mostly about men (except in sexual dreams). Perhaps it's the other way around when we're awake? Do female roleplayers play almost exclusively female characters?

The latest couple of days I've found myself humming and whistling mainly on one single song. In fact, I think this particular song has made a similar appearance here once before. "Rose i min hånd" by Knutsen/Nellie Neuf. From a show presumably for children, this song features a ghost who wants to hold a rose in its hand, but cannot, because ghosts don't exist ... they are just there in spite. I'll translate the parts that runs and reruns through my brain:

"If I could weigh anything, I would be huge!
If I had the stomach to eat like a tiger,
I would weigh a hundred tons...
that's not possible when you are a ghost."
"Wish that I could live my life
Just like you
Spend the night sleeping,
the summer vacationing..."

And the refrain:
"Want to be a human just like you,
touch all the things that are in my way
smell, move, know, feel, touch, sense, hear...
Want to be a human, not a ghost,
take a small rose in my hand."

From the first time I heard it, I've found this song disconcerting. It's so at odds with the outlook I had then, and which may yet be driving me. I wanted to become spiritual - more and more spirit, less and less flesh. I did not want to be so bound to the material plane that leaving it behind would be some kind of hell. I guess this sounds like religion, and it is. The irony is that my religion actually does not support the notion that God created the spirit but the devil created the body.
(ObGabGab: I have strong religious convictions and am a compulsory writer, but I don't have seizures.)
Oh well. Anyway, lately I'm wondering if my moving into cyberspace is more of the same. My physical presence is of no matter to those who know me this way. I am the words I choose to write and the pictures I choose to take. I am, in effect, becoming a ghost in the machine.

And then something slips through the cracks. A small voice of dissent. And it whispers in my head: "Want to be a human just like you." Do I?

On a more prosaic note, this is where I run off to take the night train to Oslo for a day's meeting with the computer people. No socializing. I don't think I'm gonna sleep much in my seat, particularly not since my duckling still cries out in pain at the merest touch of an underwear. In fact, I tried to cover it with soft cotton fiber and it still cringed in pain. This is not going to be fun. But hey, at least I am male. I don't have trouble with my reproductive apparatus every month...


Blasts from my past:
Yesterday
Back to my May page.


I welcome e-mail: itlandm@online.no