{"id":924,"date":"2005-04-24T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-24T23:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/archives\/924"},"modified":"2005-04-24T19:40:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-24T23:40:00","slug":"the-curse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/archives\/924","title":{"rendered":"The Curse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Damn it. Damned dirty msn.com. Those bastards, with their enticing free online games. <\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, I&#8217;ve become <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0073812\/\">Tommy<\/a>. I&#8217;m a wizard. I sure play a mean Bejewelled.<br \/>\nLike, I&#8217;m on level seventeen with over 170,000 points and it&#8217;s as natural as breathing. I *cannot* lose.<br \/>\nI keep hoping, praying that I will run out of moves, that the game will end and I can go back to thinking about Robert Browning, but I have achieved a higher plane of gaming skill. All my energy has been funneled into moving tiny electronic jewels around a puzzle board. I am unstoppable.<\/p>\n<p><u>Here is my current score:<\/u><br \/>\nMoira 1, Bejewelled 0.<br \/>\nEssay 1, Moira 0.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pics.livejournal.com\/pipesdreams\/pic\/0001d0tb\/s640x480\"><\/p>\n<p>**Edited to add: at the end of it all, I surpassed level 20 and had over 270,000 points. And stinking MSN <i>still<\/i> gave me only 3 out of 5 stars!!! What kind of losers have the time to play this game to over 500,000 points, I&#8217;d like to know?**<\/p>\n<p><font size=2>ps &#8211; Oh, and also, I&#8217;ve managed to convince myself that if I ever do achieve 5 stars, it will be just like in &#8216;The Last Starfighter&#8217;, or &#8216;Ender&#8217;s Game&#8217; and I will be recruited by an intergalactic freedom fighting mission to go forth and conquer a vile and heartless race of sentient beings shaped like shiny jewels, who can only be defeated by arranging their ranks into files of corresponding colour. So even if this whole &#8220;Master&#8217;s degree&#8221; thing doesn&#8217;t work out, at least I will be battling for the good of the Universe. What will YOU be doing? Hmm?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Damn it. Damned dirty msn.com. Those bastards, with their enticing free online games. Suddenly, I&#8217;ve become Tommy. I&#8217;m a wizard. I sure play a mean Bejewelled. Like, I&#8217;m on level seventeen with over 170,000 points and it&#8217;s as natural as breathing. I *cannot* lose. I keep hoping, praying that I will run out of moves, <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/archives\/924\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consciousness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}