Stephanie Bri

When I was a kid it didn’t take long to learn that growing up in Kansas we said things a little differently locally than how they talked on the TV. Then after we moved across the country to Idaho I started to notice they talked different than we did and the folks on the TV. After a while I became fascinated with the differences in the way various Americans from around the country used the English language.

The first time I heard the word Linguistics was in middle school. It was one of the electives my school offered when I was in the 8th grade so I took it. Okay I was partially motivated cuz a girl I had a crush on was in the class but still, I was fascinated by the topic. In that class we mostly just learned a few simple phrases in a half dozen languages and them compared them to get an understanding of how different languages work.

We learned the same phrases in German, Italian, Spanish, French and Japanese. We learned how to say “hi, my name is” “what is your name” “where is the bathroom” “I would like bread and chicken please” and we learned the different words for the colors and numbers. This was far from enough to learn anything meaningful or practically useful in any of these languages but it was still a fun class that I rather enjoyed. For reasons I don’t wanna get into here I never completed the class but I enjoyed it while it lasted.

From there the closest I got to anything lingustics related was taking a semester of Spanish in high school and taking a few advanced English and Literature classes along the way along with Creative Writing and Poetry. Most of this gave me a much greater understanding of how English works along with some history of the language itself but not much beyond that.

By the time I got to college, at the age of 28, things had changed. I was required to take a foreign language class so I chose Japanese. It was the only one that appealed to me. I also hoped, in vain, that if I got good enough I could use that to play some Japanese exclusive video games I had missed out on. It didn’t work out so well but I had a lot of fun learning what I did, even though I have long since forgotten nearly every single thing I learned at the time.

Then I finally got to take a proper college level Linguistics class. I loved everything about it. We spent most of our time learning the DNA of English but we also learned a lot about the tudy of linguistics as afield. While at the time my Major was Broadcasting (an option dropped from the university the next year but I was locked in) and my minor was shall we say rotating every other semester. This was around the time I began considering locking in and going for a full Linguistics option. My school didn’t offer a dedicated Linguistics degree of any sort but my advisor suggested switching my Major to English with a Teaching Emphasis and a Minor in English Literature to maximize the English language options the school had to offer. Her logic was combined with taking additional language classes for electives would give me the best chance of getting into the field of Linguistics post college and that I could fall back on teaching if that didn’t work out. It was a solid plan so I went for it.

I ended up taking some pretty hefty nerdy language related classes that ultimate didn’t serve me beyond establishing a $5 vocabulary I haven’t found useful in every day conversations. If I had followed that path instead of where I ended up I think my life could have turned out differently. However due to a few bad decisions I can’t discuss here right now my time at the univeristy was cut short and I had to move on. Still I love learnimg about the origins of words, the relationship various languages have to one another and using those $5 college words when I get the chance. Lately I have been contemplating looking into giving going into teaching another go but things have been slow going so far.

Sometimes when you watch a movie as a kid you dislike it because it doesn’t have anything happening that would appeal to a kid. Every once in a while now that I am much older I try to give a movie from my childhood I disliked another shot. Sometimes I am suprised to discover I enjoyed it more than I thought. Other times I just remember why I avoided it in the first place.

Then there are the movies I missed out on as a kid even though I was the right age to see them and they were popular back then. Two of those were The Goonies and The Neverending Story.

I am goinna discuss 4 movies that fall under both of these categories.

I will start with The Goonies. while it was always on TV and my ssite watched it a lot, it never looked appealing to me so I never sat down to watch it. I was into my 20s the first time I saw it and I was an 80s kid. I discovered not only did I rather enjoy it considerably, I felt like I cheated myself by not seeing it when I was the right age for it. This was the first time I realized there were fantastic movies from my childhood that I let myself miss out on.

Next up is The Neverending Story. This is another one that was always on TV that I just thought looked boring. Don’t get me wrong, I read the book once in 1st grade and it was fine but whenever I saw the movie playing I just thought it looked, off to me. So I avoided it until I was damn near 30. Unlike The Goonies where I felt like I missed out on an amzing childhood classic I would have loved, I felt disappointed in this one. So much I wrote it off as boring and uninteresting. I figured maybe I was being too harsh on it so I gave it a second shot a few years later only to reaffirm my disdain for it held up.

 

Now for the two I did see as a kid I hated then that I rewatched recently.

The first is Top Gun. I saw it on TV all the time cuz my dad loved it. As a child who was into sci fi and fantasy, it was just so boring to me I never could pay attention to it whenever it was on so I wrote it off as boring and lame. I watched it again for the first time today and was blown away at how much I actually enjoyed it. I guess it is another one of those 80s movies that doesn’t have much to offer a kid but as an adult I really appreciated it so much more.

Then there is The Karate Kid. Admittedly I saw the 3rd one the most because it was the one my sister liked so she had it on all the time. I only saw the original a couple of times and was bored to tears every single time. So I decided to give it another shot recently and once again I was just bored to tears. Absolutely nothing happening at all to keep my attention.

I learned a couple of things. Some kids movies would have been better enjoyed had I seen them as a kid while some adult movies a kid found disinterested could turn out to be entertaining as an adult. But I also learned not every first impression is off. Sometimes my first instinct about something remains true even after reevaluating it.

They went by different names but when I was a kid there were a lot of what we today simply refer to as Choose Your Own Adventure books. I couldn’t be bothered to look up the different series but I do know Find Your Fate was another one. I read a LOT of these types of books. Okay, I was a nerd so I read a LOT of all types of books but still let me explain.

There were four in particular that stand out in my memory as extra siginificant for one reason or another.

I am not going to even attempt to look up their correct official titles so I will do my best to describe them as I can.

Super Mario Bros something or other.

Now there was one that was based on the Mario video games and one based on the Zelda video games of the NES era I got from my library. The Zelda book didn’t stick with me but I DO vividly, kinda sortaish at least, reading the Mario one. What I do remember is as you took the different paths you earned coins. Once you got to “The End”, whichever end befell your hero as you read, you added up all the coins you supposedly earned and then you were supposed to record your high score in a blank score page at the end of the book that was, well it was a library book you can fill in the rest lol.

I don’t remember anything about the story, like I said I read a lot of books as a kid, but I do remember that high score gimmick. I don’t remember if or what the gimmick for the Zelda book was or would have been because I only flipped through it and got bored right away.

Indiana Jones and the Eye of the Fates, I think.

I am not 100 percent certain what it was exactly called but I do know this was the only book of this nature I ever actually owned so it was the only one I read every path to get all the good endings. Again it was a really long time ago so I don’t remember many details but I do remember being intrigued and very excited to read each different path as I went back to the beginning over, and over again.

Transformers G1 book

I don’t remember the details, nor the title but I do remember checking out a Transformers choose your own adventure style type book from the library once. The only thing I do remember from it, aside from having names of robots I didn’t recognize from the cartoon, was getting to the page where, if I remember correctly, the G1 Minibot UFO Cosmos was blown out of the sky and apparently died. I was so shocked by that I put the book back and didn’t even bother reading it again.

 

Snow White

I am not sure if it was based on the original fairy tale, the Disney interpretation or something else but this was THE single most important book I ever read as a kid. I was in the 1st grade. I distinctly remember reading it for the first time and every single time I read the narrator refer to Snow White using female promouns I became gidding imaging when I read she or her it was talking about ME. This was about the time I started to realize I was a girl pretending to be not a girl. This put me on a long path of self discovery that ultimately led to my current life of transitioning as a transgender woma. This book changed my life.

 

That is not every single find your fate sort of book I read but those were the four that stuck with me the most for one reason or another.

I was probably way too young to remember the very first time I was exposed to break dancing. I was born in the 80s so I am sure it was something that was always just there. However I do remember when I went from thinking “wow that shit is dope but I could never do that” to getting off my lazy ass and actually doing it.

I was not the type of person you would ever expect to get good at breakdancing on any level. As a kid I was clumsy, over weight, uncoordinated and a loner. In other words I had none of the skills or prerequisits you would expect a breakdancer to have.

I do remember the first time I told myself that even if I never got good I was going to push myself to be the best breaker I could be. I was 17 years old and in high school. I had just returned to public school after a year of being homeschooled. I resisted going back at first because up to that point I had never done anything worthwhile in school. But this time was different. I went back with a purpose and someday I will tell more of that story but today I just wanna focus on the daning part.

I have always been into hip hop music. It wasn’t a stretch for me to become immersed in hip hop culture, especially once I moved to Nevada and all my friends were into it too. This was the motivation I needed. I had a friend, homie actually, I spent every spare minute I had of every day. Most of the time we just sat in my car in his backyard listening to music daydreaming about becoming famous rappers or whatever.  It was early in the school year when he and I were attending the Homecoming dance with our friends and dates for the night. All of a sudden the DJ put on Shannon’s Let the Music Play and I witness my first real life in person breakdance battle unfold before my eyes. Watching those kids who were my age in my highschool do the magic tricks on the dance floor I had always aspired to do myself was all the kick in the butt I needed.

The next day my homie and I decided we were just going to do it. During that time we cobbled together a functional but mostly garbage picked DJ set up and began teaching ourselves how to mix and scratch records in a vain attempt to make some rap music. We also went around town scavenging every bit of scrap plywood we could scrounge up to build our very own dance floor in my backyard. It was perfect because he lived in the trailer nexy to mine so we sorta shared a backyard anyways so it worked out for the both of us.

The next thing we did was set out to make our way to the shopping mall. Our mission was to buy any and every break dancing video tape we could find. We ended up getting two different Battle of the Year tapes one from 1998 and one from 1999 and a Mr. Wiggles tape I have long forgotten the name of. We ran an extension cord to the backyard where we plugged in his portable TV/VCR combo unit and popped those tapes in. Our first few viewings we were just amazed at all the amazing and spectactual breakdancing we were witnessing that was beyond the brief glimpeses we occassionally saw in music videos on MTV. This was it, we were actually going to take this seriously.

After a while we started just picking the moves we saw that we decided we would each focus on that we figured would be the easiest for us each to learn. As I was taller and less athletic at the time I started with the simple poplocking stuff I saw in those tapes. He was going to spend his energy learning how to do a backspin from a six step. He didn’t want to go big just get a basic combo down first.

We would run home after school every day with our boombox and every breakdancing song we could get our hands on either on tape or cd depending on what we could find. I was making frequent trips to Sam Goody and Hasting desperately looking for any CD or tape that had any well known breaking or popping worthy songs. We weren’t learning to break to rap music, we were mostly focused on what was called Electric Funk or Boogaloo specifically with some techno, tech house, trip hop and Freestyle thrown in for good measure. I was white and he was Latino so we were trying to find music that had a rythm that worked for the both of us.

The first song I started playing on repeat to practice my moves was by an artist called Will to Power. The song was called Dreamin. The one he picked for his stuff was by Newcleus called Jam On It. Then he had an idea. He observed I wasn’t very athletic but if I signed up for track I would at least have access to the weight room and I could beef up some. So I did. Now I wasn’t in track for the letter jacker or the glory, I just needed to pump those irons to build up my upper body strength. Meanwhile as my track coach pushed me into becoming a distance runner I had the side effect of actually getting in shape along the way unbeknownst to me. By the end of the school year he and I were ready to show off what we had learned.

It was time for the Sweetheart Ball. The last dance before prom. Because we had honed our DJ skills he and I and were becoming known as a hip hop due in school we were chosen to DJ that particular dance. While it did impress a girl I liked at the time into going with me, that didn’t work out as I was too focused on DJing to pay enough attention to her.

Finally it was late in the evening. Everyone was getting tired of dancing to Britny Spears and Backstreet Boys stuff. They were ready to get their blood pumping. So I nodded at my friend to signal it was time. I put on Spring Love by Stevie B. This was the song we practiced together and knew we could bust our moves in sync wihout fail. At first the usual kids did their moon walks glides and slides onto the dance floor and it was the same old stuff we’d seen every dance before. Some nice popping, some decent miming and a couple of backspins. Cool, sure for teens with no real experience yeah.

It was my turn. I did my robot glide sideways moonwalk out into the center of the dance floor. With every eye on me, I signalled my friend to flick on the strobe light. I went into a half worm half robot move nobody in our town had seen we dubbed the robot worm. Fortunately even though I missed the first step the strobe light covered up my mistake and the crowd nodded in approval. But I wasn’t the star I was the warm up comedian getting the crowd ready for the real deal.

Up to this point nobody in our high school had learned any dance moves in the hip hip culture known as power moves. There were some good robot dancers, some good pop lockers, and plenty of people who could do the worm and the basic backspins, but nobody in our school could do a headspin, 1990s, flare, or even a windmill. My partner in crime had been working his ass off to perfect his six step into a backspin then lift up onto his shoulder move set. Like I said it wouldn’t be impressive to a professional breakdancer but it was something these kids had never seen before in person. Except even I knew he actually had been working double time on a true power move that he was going to try.

With the break of the song hitting it was time. He went out there and did the usual top rock, down rock into a six step everyone else did before, but instead of flopping onto his back into the still cool but routine for this crowd backspin, he did something NOBODY expected. He busted out a fucking WINDMILL. This 14 year old kid who only started breakdancing six months earlier had just did an advanced power move many dancers don’t even attempt until they have some battles under their belts. Nothing impressive in the grand scheme of breakdancing as a whole but the crowd was so rowdy everyone stood up on top of everyone screaming and clapping and pumping their fists so loud the cops were called because THEY thought the dance had turned intoa riot.

Me and my homie went back to school on Monday as heroes. We WON the respect of the whole school Sure everyone was impressed with my robot worm, a move they had never seen before. And while the Windmill is a DIFFICULT move to learn, we had all seen it in music videos but NEVER in person done by a kid we were in math class with. He and I owned that school for the next two years. I was elected student council president and made head of the Prom committee my senior year. We did a LOT in that time using our newfound popularity but nothing will ever replace the memory I have of that night every kid in town screaming in support of me and my best friend doing something six months earlier we both would have said was impossible for us.

No matter what you want to do in life if you want it bad enough you just need someone to push you to believe in yourself and put in the time. After buffing up by taking track and pushing myself that first year I went from just doing increasingly compelx robot moves to my own physical power movess. I never bother learning the Windmill, that was his thing. Eventually he masted the even MORE Impressive Flare which holy shit was awesome. As for me I masted the ONE move nobody else in our town even attemtped. I became the first kid in our high school to get the headspin down. That was MY power move. I also could bust out a 1990s if I needed to to mix things up. Yeah he and I were not good enough to even make a local TV commercial even if we auditioned nor would we ever “go pro” but those three years we made breakdancing a big part of our lives we got the most out of it, and that’s was hella fucking fun at the time.

Hideki Sato passed away over the weekend and I didn’t wanna follow the crowd and write about a guy who’s name I likely never heard before while turning my appreciation for the work he was invovled in into some reflection of my own life. I also don’g wanna just do a why the Sega Genesis was so special to me because let’s face it It’s not something I haven’t talked about at length. So really what can I say that others haven’t already done so?

My first instinct is to do a year by year of the various Sega hardware I have interacted with and go into what each one meant to me. Except I am not entirely sure exactly which specific projects this person was invloved in. It is sad that a person who was so integral to the decade where Sega was at their peak, but then I think well am I just making it about me?

I didn’t wanna do that either. I certainly don’t wanna just do a fly by repeat of my thoughts on the different Sega machines as that’s something I have done plenty and isn’t reflective of what I am feeling, which is unrelated but since I am emotional right now for different reasons and since I made a note to discuss this I figured I would start putting my thgouhts down and see where it leads. I figure that is the best I can do.

So in the interest of being fair to the legacy of the company he worked for and the lives his work surely impacted one way or another what I will do is say one positive memory I have of each major console and one memory that I have that isn’t as positive. In other words a one good thing, one bad thing about the various machines. Without looking into his wikipedia page to learn which exact projects he may have been directly involved in I do know enough about Sega’s history to know it really doesn’t matter because all of their arcade boards are built on top of one another and all of their home consoles are likewise  built on top of each other based on a scaled down version of their respective arcade board. In other words, whatever he did was carried through to the end simply by the nature of how Sega developed their hardware.

I will not do what others do and skip over their arcade side of things. It wouldn’t take long for me to mention every arcade game I have played that was produced in some part by Sega simply because while the company produced more arcade games than I could ever realistically mention, I personally have only played a few so I will start with those.

To keep this from becoming too unweidly I will just list the Sega arcade games I know I played at one point.

Altered Beast

Afterburner

Golden Axe

Virtua Racing

Virtua Cop

Virtua Fighter 2

House of the Dead

Jurassic Park

Star Wars

Like I said it was a short list. While Sega were the undisputed kings of arcades for more of their history than not, they weren’t the only company making arcade games and as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s when arcades dominated gaming culture, I played more arcade machines than I can count but they weren’t all from any single company.

What I will say is their arcade games were well designed, fun and often not as hard as many of their contemporaries.

Sega Master System

My personal memories of this console are extremely limited. I bought one from a thrift store used way back in the early 2000’s but I am not gonna lie, despite owning it for several months with a decent selection of carts, I never once bothered to hook it up and try it out. It was just a piece of Sega history I bought with the intention of looking into someday but I never did. That is it. I don’t have any other experiences with it so moving on.

Sega Genesis.

Since I yap about this thing excessively I will keep this short. One personal mempory I hold near and dear to me is this was the first console I owned that was just mine. I got mine for my 12th birthday in September of 1994. The pack in game I got with my model 2 was Sonic 2.

I don’t have any negative memories of the Genesis other than desperately wanting a Sega CD and 32X as a kid and never getting either until I was an adult with my own money.

Sega CD

A positive memory is finding a copy of Lunar Silver Star complete in box at a pawn shop for $15 bucks that one time. My negative memory is playing the games.

32X

I bought mine for $8 used from a game store that didn’t even know what it was and just wanted it off their shelf. My positive memory is buying every game from the North American library. My negative memory is how short lived it was and how sad I was I didn’t get one when it was new.

Saturn

Positive memory is playing some great games I never would have otherwise. Negative memory is how EXPENSIVE every single game was.

Dreamcast

My positive memory is playing Mortal Kombat Gold at my friends house when he got his Dreamcast for Christmas. My negative memories are literally everything else associated with it, I didn’t enjoy it moving on.

I won’t bother with their handhelds because the Game Gear was, more or less but not literally just a portable SMS and the Nomad was just and very literally a portable Genesis so nothing to discuss there. I owned each at one point but I didn’t keep either for very long and rarely played them.

There, I got my feelings off my chest while being as respectful as I could without repeating everything I have already said before, over and over again. RIP and thanks for the memories.

I want to be clear every generation has dealth with it’s own hardships. The Boomers had the Cold War and it’s impact on the world which lasted for 3 decades but was a series of interconnected events stemming from the aftermath of WWII. And yes outside of America the Cold War was absolutely felt more so by certain countries than others and was absolutely a global crisis but most of it’s catastrophic events really only impact a small number of countries directly, ALL global situations have some broader, regional impact, so let’s get that out of the way first.

However Boomers, at least in the US, still had a mostly strong economy and celebrated greater individual freedom than their offspring did.

Gen Z comes close having been born into the War on Terror and it’s Far reaching global implications, but we still have them beat as we approach middle age.

Gen X had Vietnam and the Civil Rights Crisis but those weren’t fully global, Vietnam more than the civil rights stuff but largely those were still America and her allies problems with a few collateral casualties around the globe but still not fully truly global crises.

Mellennials have had nothing but one global catastrophe after another during every phase of our lives, with a brief period of wide ranging events around the globe during the 90s that affected various regions, sure, but not on the scale as the following world altering events.

First we were born smack dat as the Cold War was coming to an End. While we didn’t experience the Duck and Cover drills our parents did, we still saw a lot of nuclear war discussions in the news, films and TV and even our cartoons. We were fortunate to witness the end of the Cold War and a brief period where wars and disasters affected others but not everyone in the 90s. Then just as we were entering or approaching adulhood two major world changing events happened.

The first was Columbine. While it was largely isolated to just the US initially, the rising occurance of mass shootings around the US started to force other nations to reconsider their own gun safety laws. It wasn’t as wide reaching as what came next but first let’s back it up.

Yes we were born as the Cold War was winding down but you know what was happening while we were being conceived? The AIDS epedimic. Back then getting HIV was a death sentence and it was absolutely global in it’s reach and impact. It wasn’t until well into our adult lives that we had AIDS and HIV under control enough to let our guard down, but it was always rining alarm bells in the back of our minds.

Then September 11th happened. This immediately launched the entire world into the cross hairs of the Bush era War on Terror. Suddenly US troops, who had been basically everywhere since WWII, were not even more active than ever before. While the US military itself has been the source of pain and suffering around the world since the first World War, true, it still mostly affected isolated people’s and their surroundings one conflict or operation at a time. But the War on Terror affected and shaped global politics, policies, and everything else for decades, having lasting impacts even today.

While the Boomers parents remember Pearl Harbor and the Gen Xers remember getting sent into Vietnam for who even knows why, the US made it a point to make their self imposed Global War on Terror everybody’s problem, whether they liked it or not. We were teens, kids, or very young adults when 9-11 happend. We ALL knew friends, family, loved ones who were about to go die for something we didn’t fully understand but we knew nothing was going to stop from happening.

Again the Boomers, and Gen X have had their recessions come and go, generally speaking aside from the dark times in the 70s during the brief, comparatively speaking, Gas Crisis, they still enjoyed a generally stronger and far more solid economy than the one we were dumped into unprepared.

We spent the entire decade of the 90s being told we HAD to go to college to be useful in the coming techonoly driven future. So our parents and their politicians gave us student loans and Pell Grants to get those, now, worthless pieces of wall paper. Instead we got saddled with loads of unmanagable student debt, a shrinking job market, a non existence housing market and a constant barrage of Boomers telling us to tighten our belts while they kept taking away every government program we grew to depend on.

Then there was the Great Recession that began with the US based housing bubble. This also had far reaching global implications that lasted for a solid decade. Even as world powers adjusted to the collapse of long standing financial instutitions the financial elite kept hoarding even more of the weath for themselves and leaving us breadcrumbs.

Then there was the COVID pandemic. Yes there were other pandemics around the globe but nothing as far reaching universally since AIDS was nearly conquered. As the entire world started to respond, in various ways, to the global pandemic they also became to feel the pinch of the American weathy further removing their resources away from those beneath while the whole world watched everyone shift to a work from home, food delivered social distancing based society. We have slowly started to shift away from that but the impact the economic and political policies governments enacted in response are still affecting us today.

All of this leads us to today. The rise of the Fasisct Trump and his ICE goons. Every week the world leaders have to hold emergency meetings to discuss how to respond to Trump’s evern evolving barrage of threats of tarrifs, annexations, war, etc,, and all of this is what allowed Israel to tighten it’s genocide on the Palestinians, the Russians attemtp to take Ukrain by force and all the other conflicts going on around the world.

I am NOT saying other generations didn’t have their own troubles and things to deal with, they absolutely did. What I am arguing is over all, Millannials have faced one global reaching, near apocalypse causing tragedy after another. That’s without getting into the impact Climate Change has had in our lifetime, exaccerbated further by our parents and their elected officials who ensured decades long political careers would continue to dominate our entire lives constantly removing every single government program we rely on to survive.

Yes, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are growing up in a much darker world than we began life in but they still missed out on the things we had to endure first. Gen X and the Boomers had their bumps in the road but generally speaking enjoyed far more economic stability than we did.

I fear for Gen Alpha. They are growing up in a world where they trade their imbelical cord at birth for an iPhone, plugged into an AI infested social media raising them in a world where they won’t even have the skills to fully distinguish reality from AI generated bullshit. I firmly believe this is absolutely an AMERICAN Millennial perspective so yes I recognize other generations around the globe have had their shit to endure too, but from what I know from history, which admittedly is not at all comprehensive, among those Americans alive TODAY, the Millannials have had far more global crisis directly impact us than any generation before us. I have hope that we can continue to fight to make the world better for those who come after us, but right now as a Millannial approaching middle age all I can say is our souls are tired and we could certainly use a vacation right about now.

I’m dealing with a lot in my personal life above all the crazy stuff going on around the world and here in the US. So I wanted to take the time to put out some positivity for a change to hopefully counterbalance all the negativity I have even myself added to people’s lives. I hope this helps others find their own source of joy while helping me let go of the negative feelings I am battling.

I want to just write about a few things that do bring me joy and maybe why they are important to me. I wanna kinda make this semi organized, as is my way, but still kinda openended in a way.

Cats

I love cats. I have had plenty of pets in my life, from dogs to birds and even a hamster once. While I try to give every pet I bring into my life the same amount of love they all deserve, no animal has ever won my affection like my cats.

I wanna be up front I have had a LOT of cats that, let’s just say would have rather had their teeth pulled than give me the time of day, sure. However I have only had, in my entire life, exactly 3 cats that bothered to get close to me.

The first was Itty Bitty Kreepa Kat with a K and an A, aka Kreepa. or creeper as my sisters called her because whatever. I had her when I was a teenager, from the age of 16 to the age of 17. This was way back in the dark ages of the dusty old 90s, long before the infamous exploding grass monster in Minecraft, so no sher was not named after my arch nemesis. She was a kitten that my sister’s cat spawned. Unfortunately as it was a long ass time ago, I don’t remember her cat’s name or anything about it just it was my cats mother.

What I do remember about Kreepa is she was mine and I was hers. She would curl up in a ball and rest on my shoulder. No matter what I did or where I went she would follow like a happy puppy. Unfortunately due to reasons I can’t fully remember due to being lost to time, I remember having her then one day not having her, but honestly I have no memory of what happend. It could have been she succumbed to the dangers of the world and I blocked it  out due to emotional trauma. It could have been we moved and couldn’t take her with us or it could have been she ran away. I honestly don’t remember because she was far from the first cat I had that I had to give up, but I do remember she was the first one I was allowed into her heart as well. I will never forget the brief time we had together, even if I can’t fully remember how it ended.

The next cat I had fallen in love with mutually was simply named Grayson. He was not named after anyone in my world to my knowledge. He was a cat some elderly lady in my community was trying to rehome and I ended up with him and his sister, Shadow. Since they were full grown adults when I got them, I opted to keep the names she gave them. Shadow, was a feral beast who ultimately escaped out into the wild to never return one sad day and I never found her. Grayson became my soulmate for a time. Like most things in my life, again my time with him was short lived. I barely had him for around 2 and a half years total. During that time he was the absolute most like a dog of any cat I have ever had. He hunted the vermin in the house, tormenting the snakes and spiders that gave me heartburn on a daily basis. He curled up in a ball on my shoulder too and would wrap his tail around my kneck and purr affectionately all day. When I came home from college he was at the front door hopping happy to see me. He even came when I called him as any loyal pupper would so he won me over quickly.

Unfortunately because I was in college at the time I neded up moving into the college apartments on campus to save money on rent. As such I had to rehome him again. This time I gave him to a 12 year old autistic girl from my mom’s church and he went to a good home so I said goodbye and let him find a new person.

Then there is the cat I have now. His full name is Johnny Buddy Budikins Cage III. I named his myself. I named him the 3rd because he was the 3rd cat I fell in love with and so far he’s been the longest pet I have ever owned save for one dog I don’t wanna talk about here. Buddy, as I call him mostly because he was also an adult when I got him and his previous person called him that too., has become my best friend. He doesn’t sit on my shoulder nor does he bother to wrap his tail around my kneck. However he responds to my needs and he does sit with me most of the time. He’s a little more independent that the other cats I have spent time with but he comes to me when I need him, not always when I want him but always when I need him. And unlike those other cats, who I still loved in their own way, he sleeps with me every night.

 

Puppies and lap dogs

 

I will be the first to tell you dogs are demons. In general I hate these violent, flesh eating monsthers some humans find it worthwhile to tame. Especially big dogs and loud dogs. Any sized dog who is aggresive earns a spot on me hit list. But I love puppies and lap dogs. Specifically Chiauauas, (sp), Yorkies, and Weirner dogs. I could open my heart to others but never big dogs. Never agressive dogs. and never hunting dogs.

Unlike cats who I have had plenty who didn’t even know I existed despite being their human, I have, to be fair, never had a dog that didn’t treat me like I was the absolutely most important living creature in the entire world. Dogs are hella loyal and decidedly affectionate, when you let them, that much is true. However, and this is the basis for most of my animosity. Even the most well behaved , well trained dog can turn on a dime and become a viscious flesh eating monster with little to no notice. Let me be clear. I have been VIOLENTLY attacked on seven very distinc times in my life by all manner of dog. As a young child I had a dog named Buster I loved and adored. I didn’t come into this world disliking the beasts. It took years of getting bit followed by naive owners saying “they never bite anyone, they’re so well behaved” before I came to accept that ALL dogs WILL bite you seemingly for NO reason. The first four attacks were entirely and 100 percent unprovoked. I was just being friendly with a friend or neighbors dog who all of a sudden thought I was lunch. The first attack I was only 6 years old. The second attack came latter that same year.

Obviously this jaded me right away but since my immediate family and cousins all had dogs that never bothered me I didn’t immediately jump to being afraid of all dogs right away. It was the last few attacks that turned me against the entire species as a whole.

I want to stop there because this is supposed to be about positivity. So now I wanna turn my focus to the dogs I do love. First is the aformentioned Buster. He wasn’t literally my first dog, from what my parents have told me, but he is the first one who sticks in my memory so to me at least, he was the first. And he WAS the best. I ended up having to give him to my uncle who lived on a farm, and no that isn’t code for anything he really did go live with my uncle on a farm and I did get to visit him from time to time. Until, sadly, he did the thing. I wasn’t there so I don’t know why or what prompted it but he bit one of my young cousins and that was that, he was put down and I had to say goodbye to him a second time.

 

The second dog I wanna talk about was one my mom named NaNa. She was a half German Shepherd half Border Collie cross breed. She was friendly, affectionate and, yes, very protective of me and my sisters. Here is the good part of the story. She was hit by a car and I had to rush her to the vet one moring. Her throat was gashed and hanging off her kneck. Fortunately she survived and recovered. We had her in our lives for several more years until once again we moved into an apartment that disallowed pets and gave her away.

Then there is Bear. I got him for my 16th birthday. I had Bear until he died of old age over a decade later. He was the “mans best friend” dog you hear about. He slept in my bed, followed me everywhere, followed my commands and sat at my feet when I wasn’t asleep. He was the absolute BEST of any pet I have ever had, including my best cats, so yes there was a time when my favorite animal alive was in fact, a dog. I have had other dogs since Bear but ONLY small lap dogs and forever that will be the case. If I ever get another dog, which I am not categorically against, it would be such a type. Never again will I be in the rpesence of ANY dog, mine or anothers, large enough to cause me physical harm. Those days are long gone.

 

Comic books

Once upon a time I had the attention span and the drive to read novels every single day. I ended up reading more books than I will ever realistically be able to count. As time went on and my bipolar brain made my attention span and concentration skills ever smaller and harder to focus, I moved away from full on novels and shifted fully into comics. This wasn’t a gradual or all at once thing, I’ve always been into comics, as far back as I can remember. It’s just today I can read a comic book fully while novels are harder to get into. I still occasionally pick up a book it just takes me longer to finish than it used to so it’s not as common as it used to be. But most comic books are not only much shorter and often easier to read than a full novel, they also have artwork and stories I am drawn to. I don’t need pictures to read or enjoy a book, but they do make reading comics easier for me today and so I find myself picking up a comic easier than I would a novel these days.

I could give you the runaround like many comics fans do about compelling stories, interesting characters, etc., and those things are true too but what I like about comics is even when part of a larger narrative, they are usually self contained stories I can pick up, enjoy and toss aside with little after thought. I read and collect comics, I don’t analyze or discuss them in depth. I also don’t have any brand loyalty. I would be as happy reading a book from Marvel or DC as I would an indie comic nobody else has ever read. I truly ENJOY reading comics, not just collecting them. However, I don’t usually get invested in the larger story arcs. I have a few collected editions of specific stories like X-Cutioner’s Song and Age of Apolcalypes, to name two. But I generallty just grab a random floppy, flip through it, then discard it and move on. This is just how I read comics, not saying it’s how everyone else should. I am going to be honest though, as much as this might upset some folks, I never cared about the art one way or the other. I don’t get anamored by an “amazing” cover or “spectacular” panel, I just see the art as a part of the storytelling process and nothing more. It’s not to be dismissive of the artwork it just doesn’t register in my brain one way or the other. I just sorta tune it out. Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate good comic book art, it’s just not the motivating factor to my enjoying a book.

 

Chips

A lot of people have comfor food or things that make them smile when they eat. Most enjoy ice cream, cookies or cakes of some sort. Not me. I prefer chips. I generally tend to lean towards standard potato chips but I am not opposed to a good corn based chip or even the potato flake product Pringles tries to pass off as a chip adjecent snack. I just love the crispy, crunch of a good chip. Again I have zero brand or flavor loyalty. Monday I might grab a bag of some off brand BBQ lays style crips, Tuesday I might grab a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, Wednesday I’ll reach for a bag of of Queso flavored Ruffles, Thursday it’ll be some Taki’s Fuego and then Friday I might go for a salty sgtore brand regular old classic chip. I’m not at all picky. And yes I even eat Pringles happily when I am craving a good chip. I tend to prefer salty snacks to sweet snacks in general so I often go for a good pretzel or a bag of Chex Mix in subsitution of a bag of chips but I rarely reach for a Twinky or a Snickers bar. I don’t despise candy, at all, I just prefer chips of nearly all variety. I love eating chips with a meal, as a snack or for a meal substitute.

That should be some positive energy for the universe for right now. Stay cool.

 

I have given this probably way brain power over the years than I outgha have. At various points in my life where my financial situation was better than it currently is I have started, and stopped, collecting video games multiple times. Each time I take a different approach but always usually very quickly go back to the stuff I had as a kid.

Today, partially for budget reasons and also convenience, I do my retro video game “collecting” in the virtual space via ROMS and emulators. Even if I could afford to buy dedicated consoles and physical games I still don’t know if I would. Maybe if my intention was just to own them as a display piece but not to actually play them, maybe.

However as a thought exoricise just for fun I will speculate on which video game consoles I am the most likely to desire to collect and what my intentions for that system would potentially be.

This is not going to be a completely comprehensive list but it is going to be as close to such as I can get.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Regardless of money, I fully intend to someday buy a few PONG consoles and PONG clones. These are generally dirt cheap and not something you can easilly, accurately emulate. Plus they fall under the toy umbrella and I’ll never stop collecting toys.

 

Magnavox Odyssee and Odyssee 2

Hard pass. I have zero interest in either console, including for emulation.

 

Channel F

Maybe a non functional display model if I get too deep into the hobby but otherwise not that interesting to me.

 

Atari VCS

I would be all in on this. I want the varients, including the Darth Vadetr and the Jr. I wouldn’t be too selective about games. Ideally I’d prefer working carts but I would also look for some sort of flash option to bypass having to spend way too much money for rare games I had as a kid but could never afford or track down again.  I won’t say I’d go for a full set because there’s spares documentation on what that would entail, but I wouldn’t say no to any games I came across, even some varients.  I would also be interested in some, but certainly not all, accessories and upgrades.

 

Mattel Intelivision

I would skip this entirely. It’s, to me at least, just a VCS clone with less interesting software and a terrible controller. I don’t even care for it’s historical importance, it’s useless to me.

 

Atari Super System

This is one I struggle with. It looks cool, has an interesting history and does have better looking games than it’s VCS counterpart, however, it has hardly any true exclusives and none of the games on it that exist elsewhere can’t be had in a better form. In other words if I bought one it would just be an oddity that I don’t really do anything with.

 

Colecovision

Hard pass. See above.

 

Nintendo Entertainment System

Let me be clear. This is supposing I am beyond rich. As in money is no object and I don’t have to take price into account just buy what I want. In that context I would still only ever collect for the North American officially licensed RETAIL market list. I would be selective about which cart varient I bought but I would still be cart only no boxes or manuals. The ONLY unlicensed games I would consider, and not even all just the ones that interest me, are the Tengen games. Everything it MUST be licensed AND have been sold at retail. No mail aways or rental exclusives or Action 52 crap.  I would also go all in on accessories.

 

Sega Master System

Much like the NES, SMS I would also try to go for a mostly full retail set along with some hardware varients and accessories.  However unlike NES, with SMS I would be open to buying games from Brazil or Japan only in addition to NA, but not PAL stuff.

 

Atari ProSystem

No. I could consider just another Atari VCS varient but this device is garbage I wouldn’t want contaminating my living space.

 

Turbo Grafix-16

Most likely not. There are at most maybe ten total games for the entire console I’d care about, including the useless CD add on. but I would maybe intersted in the TurboExpress just as an oddity if nothing else and a handful of games to go with it. Otherwise very low interest in this unit.

 

Sega Genesis

100 percent complete everything. All official hardware models including 3rd party varients like the Ex’Eye, every NA NTSC retail release licensed or otherwise, the Japan and Brazil exclusives that have English text options, every accessory, including 3rd party stuff like the Interactor, etc. I am ALL IN on the Genesis.

 

Super Nintendo

Absolutely. Like NES and Sega I want everything. Unlike NES, I also want unlicense stuff and yes even SOME aftermarket and homebrew stuff. When it comes to SNES I want it all.

 

Sega CD and 32X

Yes, all varients and models, all games but not the non game software. Sega CD I would want games in cases but manuals and artwork optional. 32X cart only.  But none of the 32X CD stuff.

 

NEO GEO

hard pass. Same with the CD version. I would consider getting an arcade cabinet but never the home console stuff.

 

3DO

Yes and no. Yes to a couple of models but ONLY with the MPEG upgrade and ONLY as a Video CD player for my media and electronics collection, NOT as a video game console.

 

Sega Saturn

I would but with a couple of limitations. First Saturn exclusives ONLY. That means if a game is on Playstation, 32X, or Sega CD I get it on them, NOT on the Saturn. The exceptions are the various Virtua Fighters and Sonic 3D Blast, duh. I would consider some accessories and games must be in cases but I don’t need manuals or artwork. I would pass on the network stuff though and probably the RAM upgrade.

 

Playstation

Kinda. I would buy a couple varients of the machine, including the tiny model, but games I would be extra selective over. I won’t make any hard rules just not everything and only stuff I might be interested in. Must include the case and artwork but manuals optional.

 

N64

I would get the base unit no RAM upgrade. A handful of no more than 30 games, one of each matching controler to the base color, no varients. cart only no manuals or boxes. No sports, wrestling or games I can get elsewhere.

 

Sega Dreamcast

I go back and forth on this. I have zero interest in the damn machine, littler to no interest in the games and I despise nearly everything about it. As much as I love Sega, this is the black spot on their entire existence I can’t easily overcome. However I think my official answer is never. I hate this pile of useless overrated sewer filth too much to bring it into my life.

 

PS2

console and some accessories but very selective library. games must be in cases with art but manuals optional.

 

Nintendo GameCube

Yes 100 percent all in everything. Games with cases and manuals. all accessories and upgrades. Every varient and color. All the controllers to match. All the GBA stuff to go with it all. Everything.

 

Xbox family

Nothing. Never. none of it.

 

Nintendo Wii

Just the base console and a HANDFUL of important games and that’s it.

 

Wii U

All models, all colors, all games but only games with a physical US retail release. Must be complete in box.

 

PS3

I already own one but sure I could get some varients and more games but I won’t go crazy with it

 

PS4

This is one I want not everything but as much as I can get without going nuts. Not interested in varients or digital only games so I would stick to games witha  physical release that aren’t always on or require updates. I would prefer games in the case with artwork but case and disc only is acceptable.

 

PS5

Not interested.

 

As I am only discussing consoles and not handhelds that is where this list ends. Nothing newer than this. Handhelds will be a seperate list. Stay cool.

You will often hear three entirely different stories online about who gets credit for inventing video games. It sounds like a simple cut and dry answer, who did it first? But it’s not so simple because you have to look beyond WHAT was done and look at WHY it was done. There were SEVERAL court cases that ultimate COULD NOT determine WHO invented video games because the answer is NOT so simple.

Story 1 suggests some studentds at a University fiddling with a PDP-1 and an Oscilliscope invented video games because they made Computer Space. Except this is not true. That was a computer SIMULATION, not a game. It had no objective and there were no points, no goals,no end, no rules it was just a proof of concept tech demo at best. NOT a video game, or interactive TV game as it was originally called at the time. It was a computer displaying graphcis that the USER could control, but that’s it. Oh and less than 60 people in the WORLD even used it at the time so yeah that doesn’t count.

Story 2, Ralph Baer Invented the Odysee for Maganvox and that is the first video game. Well also still not entirely accurate. YES like Computer Space, it displayed graphics on a TV screen the USER could manipulate, that was ALL it did. It still required a clear plastic overlay to TELL the user how they COULD move the single pixel curser and again it had NO objective, no points, no rules no “gameplay” and thus was NOT the first video game. It was the first interactive TV PROGRAM, I guess, but decidedly NOT a “video game” by any definition we would use today, Sure you COULD keep score of your goals, but YOU had to do that on paper, the program didn’t do that itself.

CORRECTION” Baer DID hold SOME patents but not on inventing “video games” entirely.

Story 3, Nolen Bushnell created the first video game with Space War, a more playable and more commercial viable version of Computer Space that didn’t require the use of the expensive PDP-1 but could run on less expensive hardware. Of course this is also not entirely accurate as Space War was a tech demo that Bushnell quickly discovered was TOO complex for the user and he shelved it in favor of a simple table tennis game he called PONG because it was a virtual Ping Pong game and the sound it made when the pixel hit the paddel.

It is FAR more accurate to say that the university students laid the FOUNDATION of what COULD be a video game, Baer invented an electronic device that RESEMBLED what would become a video game and Bushnell created the first TRUE video game in Pong. It was self contained. It was programable. it had defined rules, an objective, a goal and it kept score internally in the machine. By ALL defintions of what we would today call a “video game” PONG was the TRUE first.

That doesn’t mean we dismiss the work that LED to the development of PONG. We certainly owe Ralph Baer a debt of gratitude for his invention and he deserves his FOOTNOTE in the story but we need to stop pretending like PONG wasn’t the first when it WAS, nor that Bushnell deserves credit because he was an oprtunistic capitalist because they ALL were. Sure Pong LOOKS like the Odyssee on the surface, but it is still slightly more advanced AND it is a proper “game” not JUST a moving dot on  the screen.

I purposefully didn’t bring up Tennis for 2 because that was ALSO just a science experiment and ALSO NOT a full game just a computer simulation. just thought I would throw that out there because my issue with it is the same as Magnavox, you can’t PLAY an entire game without outside assistance because it just moveds the dot back and forth, there is no timer or score card or anything else. It’s literally just a tech demo, a science experiment done in a lab that only a HANDFUL of people ever even saw.

Nolan Bushnell took all the PIECES others before him laid out and put them together into the first TRUE, and PROPER video game that we could recognize today. All the other stories are half true but missing the KEY component that makes a “game” a game,  you can dislike Atari all you want but at the end of the day it is PONG that STARTED the video game industry, even if not technically the first device some might call a video game. Did he INVENT the video game, debatable, but he did CREATE the video game INDUSTRY, undeniable.

I have always had one major unavoidable problem when it comes to content creation and my interests. That is to say my interests are so varied that I often find myself pursuing certain projects towards one specific interest at the detriment of others then I end up losing interest and starting a new project focused on something else entirely.

This is why I have at least a half a dozen YouTube channels. I tried to keep all my different interests and topics organized into their own channels so not to confuse my audience and instead I ended up basically neglecting all channels because I got burned out too fast. I know I would be better just focusing on one or two projects at a time but my brain is a thunderstorm inside of a hurricane on top of a rollercoaster on the side of a volcano. Focusing on one things has never been my strong suit.

I don’t want to stop making content in the pursuit of my varied interests but I also don’t want to try to maintain multiple YouTube channels to keep up with everything. I have considered consolidating everything back into my primary channel  While I have yet to fully commit to doing this I have essentially stop uploading new videos to all of my off channels except for the two I want to focus on. My primary vlog, and my Minecraft channel.

The thing is I don’t want to stop doing horror reviews or toy topics, I just don’t want to push those onto separate channels anymore. I know I will have a harder time cultivating a sizable, focused audience if my content gets too broad, but having worked in the news and entertainment business professionally I think that is a false narrative some YouTubers push. Sure a focused channel does well for a narrow audience, but you still limit your total audience by doing that. I am not saying I have the secret to sucess on YouTube, but I should also point out my goal has always been to produce videos for me, not the algorithm so I never bother to take the Google code into account when making topics. Sometimes I try to maintain some consistency but the truth is I always wanted my channel to be like this blog and my podcast before it, an open ended free for all to share all of my interests. As such I don’t care if the Youtube Ai gods punish me for not playing by their rules. I’ll just keep making videos on topics that interest me and damn the algorithm.