Monthly Archives: December 2011

There’s no one to blame but yourself for missing class

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Video games are the reason for students’ struggles in school as much as food is to blame for people’s weight issues.
College often is a person’s first taste of freedom (loads of free time) from parental supervision and influence, especially if said student lives away from home during the school year. And it happens to coincide with the dawn of adulthood.

This is me playing "Mortal Kombat" for PlayStation 3, and I turned out all right, right? Well, I graduated, at least. (Photo illustration by Steve Kuchera / skuchera@duluthnews.com)

The key is having the desire and drive to complete the necessary work without overindulging in the circus outside of the classroom. Remember, college is optional no matter how much pressure your parents might apply.
As gaming has evolved the past 25 years from the days of 8-bit, side-scrolling heroes Mario and Link to elaborate, co-op, first-person shooters and full-body, motion-sensing controllers, so, too, has its benefits. Titles such as the popular “Call of Duty” series force gamers to use multitasking, problem-solving skills and hand-eye coordination — and teamwork in online play — in order to succeed, as one friend reminded me. But that doesn’t mean any college student should blow off that 8 a.m. Intro to Psych class in favor of blasting zombie Nazis.
People are responsible for the decisions they make. Yes, video games can be a distraction when you’re living away from Mom and Dad in a dorm or house with your buddies. But so can alcohol and drugs, which all too often contribute to the derailment of people’s educational and life tracks with devastating consequences.
Some of my best memories from college — what I remember of it, anyway — include all-hours marathon gaming sessions of “WWF No Mercy,” “NHL,” “Mortal Kombat,” “Goldeneye 007,” “Contra” and “FIFA Soccer” with roommates and friends. In college — or even today, when family and full-time jobs take up time — we played when we could.
That guy who failed every class this semester because playing “Skyrim” took priority over studying for that calc final — and I’m sure there’s at least one out there — has no one and nothing to blame but himself.
I’m tempted to use the standard “bad parenting” blanket excuse that inevitably gets pulled out of the linen closet of clichés at this point, but it goes beyond that. There are such things as common sense and learning from the mistakes of others.
The “iWorld” we live in today makes it easier to act like slugs, passing up physical activity and face-to-face interaction in favor of the Netflix Instant Queue and Facebook chat. (Sadly, there’s a reason the NFL feels like it has to encourage kids to run around outside for an hour a day. It makes me feel guilty for watching eight hours of “Dexter” the other day.) But that doesn’t mean we should be held to lower standards than before.

Jimmy Bellamy is a Duluth News Tribune columnist and multimedia editor in Duluth, Minn., and a lifelong gamer. Contact him at (218) 723-5390 or jbellamy@duluthnews.com. This pro-con piece originally appeared here. The opposing view can be read here.

Death isn’t funny, but Twitter and Kim Jong Il changed that

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s death wasn’t violent like the ones experienced earlier this year by fellow world-famous bad guys Osama bin Laden and Moammar Gadhafi.

The 69-year-old communist wasn’t overthrown by the people he oppressed and hurt. And he didn’t get gunned down by U.S. military forces. He reportedly died of heart failure while riding on a train.

Kim Jong Il in puppet form was the main villain in the 2004 film “Team America: World Police.” (Photo from rottentomatoes.com)

No mass celebrations.

No cell phone-camera footage on YouTube.

No faux death photos.

One common thread they did share? Plenty of one-liners and jokes on Twitter.
“Kim Jong Il’s son has some tiny shoes to fill,” actor Jeff B. Davis said, referring to the diminutive stature of Kim, whose son, Kim Jong Un, was named his successor.

“Kim Jong Il? More like Kim Jong Dead,” tweeted a flurry of people, each of whom I like to imagine thought they were the only person in the world funny enough to come up with the line.

My Twitter timeline blew up shortly after 9 p.m. Sunday with everything from that last piece of comedy gold to news reports with as much detail as one could get from a less-than-cooperative North Korean government.

One of my favorite tweets came from comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

“Rest in peace Kim Jong Il. You were a very sweet lady,” Kimmel said of Kim, who I’m almost certain looks like somebody’s grandma somewhere.

But nothing appeared as often as references to “Team America: World Police,” the 2004 movie made by Trey Parker and Matt Stone — the creators of “South Park” — that used marionette puppets for characters. The terms “Team America” and “World Police” quickly entered the website’s list of trending topics in the U.S. The main villain in the film was Kim Jong Il in puppet form, complete with oversized glasses, bulldog jowls and tan jumpsuit.

“We did it Twitter. We made every Kim Jong-Il joke there was to make,” musician Brendan Maclean tweeted. “I’m sure North Korea will appreciate it once they get the Internet.”

Like it or not, to my generation, that’s how Kim Jong Il is best known. One of world’s most hated men is seen by millions of people as a puppet with a voice that sounds like South Park character Eric Cartman’s.

Jimmy Bellamy is a Duluth News Tribune columnist and multimedia editor in Duluth, Minn. Contact him at (218) 723-5390 or jbellamy@duluthnews.com. This column originally appeared here.

‘Two thousand’ is over, and it’s time for the twenties

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2012.
How does that sound? Seriously, how does it read to you?
Did you hear “two thousand twelve” or “twenty-twelve” in your head when you read it?
Since 2010, I’ve heard it with a mix of “two thousands” and “twenties,” and “two thousand,” sadly, is winning in a heavily lopsided battle.
The year 2000 was quick and easy to say. And we didn’t have much choice in how we said years 2001 through 2009 — I never heard someone say “twenty-o-one,” for example, when talking about 2001.
But 2010 and beyond has offered options. Do we stick with what we knew for a decade or save time and syllables for the next 87 years? I’d go with the latter.
Just do a comparison using the 1900s.
The year 1900, I only can assume, was said at the time as “nineteen hundred,” not “one thousand nine hundred.” Just like the year 1910 was “nineteen ten” instead of “one thousand nine hundred ten.”
I cringe each time I hear someone on TV or the radio, and in everyday conversation, talk about the current year and start with “two thousand.” Saying “twenty-eleven” flows better. Plus, no year should take six syllables to say.
Hopefully with 2012, a year long talked about for its connection to the end of the Mayan calendar and the belief of some that the world will end, people will drop the two thousand and stick with twenty. I mean, even the 2009 movie “2012” was pronounced “twenty-twelve.” And think about how fun it will be to say “2020” when we get there.
Comedian Bill Burr, who hosts my favorite podcast, “The Monday Morning Podcast,” starts every show by saying, “Hey, what’s going on? It’s Bill Burr, and it’s the Monday Morning Podcast for Monday, (whatever the date is), 2011.” He almost always says the year as “two thousand eleven” or even “two thousand and eleven.” And it bugs me to an unreasonable and irrational degree.
But this week, something was different. He said “twenty-eleven” for only the second or third time this year, and it sounded so right.
All of us should get behind the twenty and make that battle a little less lopsided.

Jimmy Bellamy is a Duluth News Tribune columnist and multimedia editor in Duluth, Minn. Contact him at (218) 723-5390 or jbellamy@duluthnews.com. This column originally appeared here.