3 to goooooooo

The Duff has hopefully only 3 more flights before the big flight home. He has thoroughly enjoyed the last 13 months in flight school. Making great friends, exercising more often than ever, eating lots and some flying on the side is a very simple endeavour.

Sure there were times when he felt depressed or stressed due to his flying, or from situations arising from home, but they were always managed. Therein lies his strength, his ability to cope and analyse complications, coming up with solutions.

Sadly this comes far short from making up for his faults. His laziness, his lack of social skills, his 2 left feet and short attention spans for starters. Once again, the immediate gratification and payoff from his other silly activities contribute to most of these failings. Gaming, sleeping, hiding in the room and reading brings him much joy, but perhaps depriving him of other forms.

Some say knowing is half the battle. Well, the Duff then has started the other half of the battle. He has come up with a plan for the rest of his life using gaming principles. Certainly sounds silly, but he is from the apex of the gaming generation, and while he surely isn't as hardcore as some gamers are, he is hoping that he at least has enough ideas to push these plans through. His method is simple.

Set long term goals. Hard ones. Goals that if he was on his death-bed, he can say out loud with pride that he had accomplished them. Then, set intermediate goals that would help him reach the end goals. And then another layer back, and another and so on. The first goal though, would be so simple, its almost laughable. However, the entire aim is to get the journey started. To take the first step. Finishing will come in due course.

And with any game, there should be contingencies, and parallel avenues which make the entire plan interesting. His original plans from his adolescence have failed miserably for they came without contingencies. He's hoping that this time round, there is a way out, or at least around, insurmountable odds. Like his upcoming flight test. Everything for now hinges on this path being followed through. His starting token.

Problem solving. Character improvement. Obtaining loot and experience.
Game on!

Needsmoretvtoescapereality

So the Duff is almost done with his flight training. Almost being a subjective term. He's almost done with this part, but he has so much more to learn in the near future. However, the future seems ever more elusive as the terrible winter weather has arrived and he only gets to fly once a week. Seems he won't make it for his brother's birthday, and the great family event which is the Liverpool match back home. He's anxious to rediscover his family, and the new dynamics that exist now that his parents are back home and in retirement mode, with a fresh slant towards a new religion.

SO FUN!

For now he has nothing much to do other than focus on his preparations, having passed the last phase check and is now on the home stretch for the final flight test. He'd recently sold his car that he was sharing with 3 other buddies, and that sucks majorly for he is ever more shackled to the mental asylum that has been his prison for the last 13 months. The horrible weather doesn't allow him to keep up the mileage on his jogging shoes, and the gym is cold and strange without his usual gym-mates who had gone back before him.

And thus the escape that television programmes and books provide are so very vital for his sanity. He'd recently finished The Great Gatsby, the quintessential american novel apparently. He skipped the 50 page foreword for it was a deep analysis of the ENTIRE STORY, and went straight to the novel proper. It was approximately 150 pages long, of a bygone era and populated by fuckwits. He then returned to crawl through the foreword, and was vehemently reminded why he had dropped literature in high school. The way scholars analyse a piece of prose at times comes across as grasping at straws, straws with holes all along the shaft that makes sucking anything of substance out of it a royal pain in the butt, and utterly unsatisfying. Why did he pick the green pair of underpants? Because it matches the glistening grass in the country club that he is going to now to meet hte love of his life. Why the fuck must it be that? Why can't it be because he had a wet fart in the red one the day before and its in the washer due to the hot curry over lunch with the fiery redhead whom he's seeing on the side and is into BDSM?

Straws.

New shows he's catching. True Blood Season 2. Who would've known that the cute little girl from The Piano would one day flash her tits on HBO? Virtuality, a reality show staged on a space craft that is departing the solar system to the next nearest star that appears to be able to accomodate life on one of its planets, a new show from the collective geniuses behind the Battlestar Galactica relaunch. Things the duff thought of from catching this cliched yet fresh premise;

1. Every scientist on this mission should have their own fuck buddy/spouse.
2. Especially the highly stressed commander
3. Or better still, Scientists by day, Swingers by night.
4. And since the sun never rises in space..... HELL YEAH!!!!
5. All airlocks must be as fucking manual as fucking possible. Fuck's sakes people, how many have we lost from a fuckingly stupid airlock that blows unprotected scientists into the darkness of space.
6. And always not have an AI that seems suspicious.
7. The crew would be better served by having a prostitute than a shrink, no?
8. Wouldn't the multi-racial setting only create more avenues for conflict?
9. There should never be an old hard-ass geyser on board.
10. Or someone who had lost any children lately.

Playlist: Orbital, Dune, old Jap tunes from the 90s, lectures from The Teaching Company
Reads: Catch-22
Games followed closely on facebook: Mafia Wars, Airline Manager, Farmville, Mousehunt and Battlestations