Candy Crush , really? No thanks I am on a diet!

 

Here it is open permission (with a small caveat).  I, Paul Cronin, being of reasonably sound mind and slightly broken down body, officially give permission for any of my friends to hold a pillow over my face till I expire.  Now here are the caveats, firstly it will have to wait for a month or so until my ulcer has healed as I will expect to have been provided with a quality bottle of single malt Irish whiskey, You know something that is faintly reminiscent of a peat fire, on the smoky side, rough enough to be expensive and with a kick of an Irish punter who has one too many. Back up the horse buddy I can hear you say, your last post was a didactic rant about the evils of alcohol addiction and here you are arguing for euthanasia, assited by alcohol, perhaps I better explain.

I am a bit grumpy at the moment. I will hold my hand up and confess to that.  I can’t really talk about it in a public forum right now, suffice to say if anyone is interested drop me a line, broken dreams  haunting me like a groundhog day.  So if you detect cynicism, sarcasm, derision, and a general ill-humour, arohamai my friends. If I personally offend you then please contact me and perhaps we can work it out.

I read a status the other day that expressed a frustration around not being able to graduate to another level on candy bleep bleep crush At some primeval level a darkly malevolent  epithet formed on my lips.Now I have played video games and computer games, albeit many years ago. I was quite a fan of Sims, Solitaire, and for a while Command and Conquer, oh and that stupid archer shoot the balloons game.  Somewhere some how in the last few years I have lost all desire to play those games in fact over all I am pretty adverse to game playing. I do play cards every week which is good as it forces me to be social and reminds me of the benefits of friends and family.  So face to face games that involve human interaction I do enjoy as long as they do not get too competitive.  Competition is ok but it can bring out the worst in some people and the only thing worse than a poor loser is a less than gracious winner.  I don’t need that in my life and am happy to walk away from that or just refuse to play with people like that.

Not withstanding any of that narrative I don’t play games for a couple of reasons.  I would much rather write or read than sit at a computer screen punching at buttons in some meaningless quest.  I find the stimulation of having to think when I write (no cracks about that please  ) suits me much better and I am in much more danger of learning something when I read or write.  I learn about myself when I write, and about myself and others when I read.  I also learn about others when I get feedback about my writing which by the way I enjoy.  I would hope that at some level I am pushing buttons and getting people to engage with my thoughts and hopefully themselves.

I certainly hope not to be in that place of a careless provocateur and sometimes I do equivocate before I write because I know that I will push buttons for some people and some of my writing may be hurtful.  Never deliberately I hope but the role of a poet and I do call myself that is to engage, to influence and to inspire readers with mastery of language as intertwined with ideas and emotions.  I try to bring that into my blogging.The mastery of language well I do not say that I have that at all but I hope within my blogging I certainly meet the other criteria especially emotion and ideas, as I reflected on my last post it felt a bit dry in the emotions department, however it worked for some people and that is enough for me. Enough of that n ow, back to the whiskey.

If you ever find me sitting on the computer mindlessly playing games it will be because I have most likely lost the plot, kindly offer me a bottle of single malt and you can borrow one of my pillows, gently put me out of my misery.  You see if I find myself blobbing out with games then I will know that my adversary, mediocrity, has struck a mortal blow.

Paul