URU, ANYONE?

I just discovered that they finally released a Mac version of the online game, Uru. I was a Myst fan from day one and a devotee of firm resolve after Riven. Like many of the tangents I take to the merest of nuance, the beautiful first island in Riven where the trees were leveled for pages in the linking books outside the wooden fence and the biological bounty allowed to flourish within put me on the lookout for an ecological theme to the game. As wonderful as it was, Riven never made me forget the idea of having an adventurous saga of a game wherein success requires adaptation to the peculiar natures of various habitats visited, not learning cultural language and counting so much as the tao of the place. The lesson within the game was to be that life is smooth when going with the ways of nature and a struggle when attempting to bend nature to ones desires for convenience, expedience, status and conquest; those actions that have populated mankind into a corner here on dear old mother Earth. I had even framed letters to the Rand Brothers, the original Myst team and Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael, proposing a collaboration on such a project just as the brothers went their separate ways. My resolve evaporated into pipe dreams before I mailed them.

One of the reasons I mention this is that not only will I be distracted from the decaying political scene which only churns my stomach, that I will probably be posting far less and then only in observations from the garden and the game. We’ll see how long it takes for either to have political nuances.

Although I am a rank novice so far and the Mac version is short some of the deluxe features available to pc peeps, I have learned that groups and individuals can develop their own worlds that may either remain private or go public. I see it as a way to meet fellow bloggers and have conversational exchange (I haven't learned how or earned enough merit to do that yet and must stand there like a deaf mute while a beautiful girl makes gestures and says things to me I cannot answer except by being obnoxious by jumping up and down or getting too close) and mutual activities. This may be the future of society, with only the true romantics even stepping outside their reality tunnel life inside to experience life first hand. The game can be quite absorbing.

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I’ve given up on all but one of the tomato plants and am planting squash and new arugula in their place since both succumbed to bugs. New tomato seeds where the squash were. This is only the second full summer I have had a garden and the extremes of three rainless months of June-Sept in the 100°s every day last year and heavy rains on all but twenty days through out this year yet to be warmer than 95° by the end of July this year so far has left me far more clueless than I would have ever expected. Both extremes ruined the tomatoes — drought toughened ‘em up so that when it finally rained the new growth/moisture exploded them, while constant rain kept them so juicy that part went to rot before the rest ripened unless I picked them before fully ripe. This all means that next summer will be as new an experience as the first two — and who knows what normal is?