The Red Hot Chili Peppers are my favourite band. Their songs deal with the themes of self-destruction, loneliness, seperation and redemption in a way which I can relate, but for the most part their lyrics are non-sensical rap:

Mariah: Mark: Mariah: Mark: Mariah: Mark: Mariah: Mark: Mariah: Mark: Mariah:

It always tickles me how weird people get about videogame companies, though. Creepy stalker players abound Now we know it all for sure. I don’t get it My, what a good day for a walk outside. :\ I still don’t get it I’m almost there, why should I care? What the hell are you talking about You don’t form in the wet sand. You don’t form at all. I do. You’re an ass. Now you know exactly what I feel when I hear those lyrics. -_-

If I could sit Caira down and ask her to list what her favourite things about us are, I think that she would write

Daddy says yes

on my first line, whereas Mariah’s first line might start with

Mummy is mummy

No more need be said. Mummy is the one you curl up against to sleep, who kisses your knee better when you scrape it and generally makes sure you remain healthy, fed and clothed. Daddy says yes. Want to go on the higher slide? Want a treat when mummy’s not looking? That’s my department: The Ministry of Treats and Playtime. Every place has its person and every person has their place, but I still wrestle with the question of whether we are doing a good job or not.

Are we? Little sleep yields stark questions.

For half of the week we both work, which means getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning, dressing Caira and bringing her to her grandparents home where she gets to revel in the sheer joy of being a two-year old for ten to twelve straight hours. When we pick her up at six in the evening we’re all tired and after we get home we watch TV, play with the animals, have dinner and rot in front of our computers. On Thursday and Fridays Mariah usually takes Caira out to go shopping and to go to parks. On Saturdays her grandparents usually ninja her away again (although for this weekend everyone is off to California) and Sundays are usually spent sitting around the house and trying to unwind.

Is that enough? She has a fierce, bright intellect which picks up everything she sees, analyzes it and then applies it in context. When Mariah gave her a drink last Sunday which was watered down because the ice melted, Caira set it aside, looked straight at my wife and said, ”this is practically water.” She can manage recognize abstract concepts. When Mariah and I play World of Warcraft, Caira is right there, sitting with us, chatting about Mummy and Daddy Cow killing monsters and interacting with our avatars. She knows it’s us and she already wants to play with us. Caira can moo-ve my character (heh). She can read a few scattered words already; the titles of her favourite TV shows, labels on boxes and a few book covers and I feel that early exposure to computers will be extremely beneficial to her reading and comprehension skills down the road.

So Caira’s learning. Is she happy? Her new favourite comes from World of Warcraft: My character taking a shrink potion and swift run potion and zipping about the screen as a knee-high Tauren. You should hear her laugh and snort when I do this. She loves to wrestle with me, jump on mummy hold the cats. We watch her shows with her, sit down with her when she reads her books and inform her as best we can about anything she cares to ask about. How many two year olds understand lolcat captions, I ask of you?

I feel we could do a lot better at weekends; set a schedule of activities for her and keep to it, but time and money constrain us, which isn’t so good.

We make do, on the whole. I’ll let Caira decide if we’re doing well or not, but she’s happy and I’ll put it up as a win for now.

My Shaman hit 50 and beat the crap out of the Scarlet Monastery cathedral solo, which is something that I’ve really wanted to do for a long, long time.

Apologies for the quality of the video, but if I try to capture at any higher of a resolution the game (and the resulting video) starts to stutter.

/nara

I get the Look about once a month here in Las Vegas, give or take. This is neither a look or the look, it is the Look. A hypothetical observer of the person Giving this Look to me would note the significant import given to this Look and mentally capitalize it. For me though, the Look means a few awkward moments of this Irishman becoming the Giver’s personal hero, favourite celebrity in the flesh and possibly a lifetime counselor. These are grave powers that should never be used for evil.

The Giving of the Look usually begins with me in a store somewhere, ordering something. I speak my part and mentally roll a D100. Roll a 1-99 and I get a simple I’m sorry, but could you repeat that again? Roll a 100 and I get the Look. A few silent moments pass as mental hard-drives spin up, processors crunch numbers and programs are loaded into RAM. And then I get asked:

I’m sorry, but are you Irish?

Yes. Shit.

I’m a Foreigner, you see. A flesh and blood Irishman straight for the storied days of yore. Mexicans don’t count, to Americans. I mean, their Uncle Mitch went on holidays in Moscow and in the room next to him? A Mexican family from Tijuana. The Mexican people are so ubiquitous here that they blend into the background noise and don’t really get noticed on a conscious level. Hispanics in general, that is visitors from Central American, South American and even from the Iberian Peninsula, suffer this fate too. You are foreign, but not Foreign.

I usually cringe inside while waiting for the Giver’s next statement. It will fall into one of the following categories:

So, you’re Irish… This rest of this statement is an unspoken implication that by being Irish I have regularly conversed and consorted with pixies, fairies, druids, warlocks and also that yes, I know where the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow is. I can get away with a knowing smirk and a wink.

Or

Do you know where….? The village asked about was abandoned during the famine and is now little more than a jumbled pile of stones on a lonely moonlit hill somewhere. Why yes! This village is still a bustling town somewhere peopled by your distant cousins.

Or

When is it a good time to visit? It never really is. This is fucking Ireland, one of the wettest places on Earth outside of the Amazon Basin and Seattle. My home city has the world record for most consecutive days of rain. We light fires and use heaters in July as it can get so damp and miserable. In winter we either hide behind a glass in a warm pub for two months straight or stay home and screw like rabbits. In summer we either hide behind a glass in a warm pub for two months straight or stay home and screw like rabbits. Well this is a fine time of year as the weather is great.

Or

Do you know who…? This is the worst - and thankfully rarest - question of them all. I am hailed as literally one of their flesh and blood ancestors brought through time to the present day and expected to deliver learned ancestral advice on the direction of their life and critique their life to date. I hate you. You did fine, but you should maybe get a girlfriend and maybe look for a better job, okay?