I came across an interesting idea reading Ready Player One — and I want to discuss this in the post and comments without giving any spoilers.  I’m not done with the book, and I know a lot of people haven’t read it yet at all.

The premise is that a programmer, James Halliday, created a virtual reality game that has thousands of worlds.  One of these worlds is an exact replica of his hometown, Middletown, Ohio, on a random autumn day in 1986.  There are non-player characters walking around the town, riding their bikes, mowing their lawns.

There is also a recreation of the programmer’s childhood home, perfectly replicated down to the shag carpeting.  The narrator comments on this preservation because for all intents and purposes, the programmer had a shitty childhood.  He states,

Looking around, I wondered why Halliday, who always claimed to have had a miserable childhood, had later become so nostalgic for it.  I knew that if and when I finally escaped from the stacks, I’d never look back.  And I definitely wouldn’t create a detailed simulation of the place.

It’s an excellent question: why are we nostalgic for some things and not others?  I have no desire to ever see a scrunchie or banana clip again, despite loving to wear them when I was little.  But I would do anything to get my old gummy bracelets back.  I spent hours upon hours playing tag, and while I have fond memories of the game, I have no desire to play all-neighbourhood tag ever again.  Yet I incessantly play old Atari games.

And then you have the situation in the book: if a person has no fond memories of a space, why would they want to create a simulation of it?  Is it worth someone outside of an experience visiting a space to try to understand it?  Of course.  But we’re talking about building an exact replica of something you lived through and hated so you could revisit it.  What would be the benefit of that?

Unless, I guess, he didn’t really hate his childhood.

I would love a replica of my childhood home, but I also have happy memories of childhood.  And barring a replica of it, I would at least like some of my old toys and books back.

What are you nostalgic for?  And what sort of things evoke nostalgia in your life?  Is there rhyme and reason to what triggers you to miss something?

Last week, Mental Floss ran a piece on the Loch Ness Monster.  I am so in love with the Loch Ness Monster (and its various incarnations in other bodies of water, including Chessie in the Chesapeake Bay.  We always, always, always shriek hello to Chessie when we cross the Kent Narrows) that I bookmarked it, wanting to read it as a treat when I was finished with my work.

So much for my treat.  Instead my childhood heart was SHATTERED.

You know who the real monster is?  Mental Floss.

Apparently, the infamous photo of Nessie floating on the water is a fake, snapped by Marmaduke Wetherell to support his earlier debunked animal footprint scandal.  And yes, that is an awful thing to do, but Mental Floss is 10,000 times worse.  Implying that Nessie doesn’t exist, when we all know that Nessie DOES exist?  Because he has to exist?  Because I’m planning a trip to Scotland to look for Nessie so we’re sure as hell going to keep believing he exists?

You know how I know that Nessie exists?  Because it was in the excellent 1983 National Geographic Society’s book, Amazing Mysteries of the World.  Why would National Geographic Society cover it if it weren’t completely true?  Are there grizzlies in Yellowstone?  Snow is Sweden?  Then it follows that there are lake monsters in Scotland.

I am choosing to unbookmark the article and pretend it didn’t happen.

What do you believe in even though you know it’s probably not true?

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I read an interesting way of thinking about stress.  The gist is that stress is a response that highlights what is important to you.  If it wasn’t important, it would become an annoyance and not a stressor.  We stress about things we care about.

An example from the article:

Of course, not every stressor is going to be important; sometimes you get mildly stressed over having to wait at a red light. But if you find that you’re frequently highly stressed about your family, for example, you might conclude that having a healthy relationship with them is important to you.

I know a lot of us are dealing with a shit-ton of stress at the cosmic level, which I differentiate from the day-to-day level.  And when I considered what I stress about, I realized that, yes, they are all things that are important to me.

Think about your major stressors.  Are they things/people that are very important to you?  Does thinking this way change the way you see that stress?

And feel free to vent your stress if you wish.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored posts.

Yesterday was the last day of Banned Book Week.  To celebrate book freedom, I picked up Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry for the ChickieNob.  It was one of those books I loved as a kid but hadn’t thought to pass along to the kids until I saw it on a banned book list.

It speaks volumes that I had no clue why it was banned.   I have no memory of anything controversial happening in the book.

As I stood in the library line waiting to check out, I started flipping through the pages and immediately remembered how much I felt a kinship with Anastasia.  While I never had a small, pink wart, she had always seemed like someone I would be friends with if we lived in the same town.  She was like Ramona Quimby or Margaret Simon; nice, smart girls who sometimes made mistakes while trying to figure out their place in the world.

Like wanting to name her baby brother One-Ball Reilly Krupnik.

Please?  Is that why it was banned?  I already knew about testicles from Then Again, Maybe I Won’t.

There is a part in the book where Anastasia talks about the poetry book her father dedicated to her, and I always think about Anastasia and the dedication when I dedicate a book to someone.  And my heart still breaks when I read the line, “I’m getting memories, all of a sudden!  And they don’t feel good!”

Moreover, I STILL keep an Anastasia-inspired notebook of things I love and things I hate.  I love magic (real magic AND illusions), Doctor Who, and interactive fiction.  I haven’t put anything on the hate list, even though I often think hateful things about other drivers on the road, so I could probably jot those things down.  It makes me feel like a virtuous person that my “love” side is so long and my “hate” side is empty.

Anastasia is right, it feels good to write down the things that make you happy.  So in honour of Banned Books Week, one day late, join Anastasia (and me) in listing three things you love.  And if you’re feeling it, too, three things you hate.

Side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get writing.

Judging for the 2015 IF Comp, a big interactive fiction competition, opened yesterday.  I said that I wasn’t going to vote this year, and then changed my mind when the games went up because I’m weak-willed like that.  Oh, and there was a horror game I heard about that I wanted to play.  So now I’m going to try to play all 55 games.

BUT.

There is a point to this.

As I was scrolling through this year’s games, I saw one called Switcheroo, and it’s about foster care and adoption.  It made my two IF worlds — infertility and interactive fiction — collide.  I was so glad to see that subject matter represented on the list.

I haven’t clicked on it yet so I don’t know how it will go, but you can play it online.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “The Focus of Tears” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Northern Star!
• “Not Just Another Mommy Blogger” (Mine to Command)
• “Transitions” (When Why How Baby)
• “On the Night of My 37th Birthday” (Mrs. Spit)
• “What I’ve Learned About Grief…” (Chicago Tribune)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Trisomy 18 Loss – Music and Musings has a post about not knowing how to get started with adoption.  She explains, “I feel like looking into adoption is like trying to untangle a string of Christmas lights (one not put on one of the handy-dandy light rollers, of course). I am just looking at the lump of wires and bulbs, still haven’t even found the plug on one end.”  It’s about looking for answers and finding more questions.

No Kidding in NZ has a hard post about mothering her mother.  She so eloquently says, “But it is not lost on me that this will be my only experience of mothering anyone, when things happen in reverse, and there is no great joy (and even the little joys are disappearing daily), and there is in its place only sadness.”  I wanted to envelop her in a hug, virtually holding her as she holds her mother.

Dear Noah has a post about people assuming that she is done grieving the loss of her son because a certain amount of time has passed.  She writes, “What do you mean ‘when I was grieving?’  I am grieving.  No past tense here.”  It’s really a post about meeting people in the space they’re in rather than tugging them to the place you want them to be.

Lastly, Inconceivable has a complementary post about stating she’s okay because people need her to be when she’s not really okay.  But this post blew my mind with this thought: “It perplexes me, the cultural demand for openness, the popularity of memoirs or the expectation of ‘authenticity’ in so many contexts, but while the People magazine article clawing open a celebrity sells or the confessional blog post goes viral, seeing that same exposure live so often produces the almost reflexive but you’re okay now, right?”  We ask for all the nosy details in the lives of celebrities, but we shy away from hearing the gritty details from the people around us.  I thought about this for days after reading it.

The roundup to the Roundup: Foster care/adoption interactive fiction.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 25th and October 2nd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.