tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329706.post8413977503908826834..comments2024-03-14T16:57:29.045-04:00Comments on Whisky Prajer: “Make Me A Real, Live Boy”: Artificial Gravity In WOLFENSTEIN: The New Orderdpreimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09905531259256800022noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329706.post-1307937573207926902014-11-17T21:51:51.930-05:002014-11-17T21:51:51.930-05:00I should maybe add that he and his family live in ...I should maybe add that he and his family live in East Africa. Happily. Happily marginal. dpreimerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09905531259256800022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329706.post-21939739996122674412014-11-17T20:57:08.665-05:002014-11-17T20:57:08.665-05:00We had a friend down from Germany -- "East&qu...We had a friend down from Germany -- "East" Germany, no less -- and took him to Niagara Falls at his request.<br /><br />We'd enjoyed a pleasant night of reminiscence, during which he spoke of cutting class to take the train to Berlin, where Checkpoint Charlie was suddenly out-of-commission. He and his high-school buddy had fantasized about what they would do when they finally "retired" from the State, and were eligible to defect. Now he was there, and struck by the colourfulness of the West German side of Berlin. But also struck by the relentless commercialism. When he returned to class the next day his teacher gave him the gears for skipping.<br /><br />At Niagara Falls he was utterly appalled to see the "House of Dracula" "Frankenstein Burger King" stuff on the main drag (in fact, the Canadian Side is leagues more tacky than the US American side). He settled down the closer we got to the falls. But when we returned to our car, I made a point of snapping him on the main drag. "I can see my kids liking this," he admitted. "But I'm not sure I'm happy about that."dpreimerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09905531259256800022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329706.post-68422343903658552232014-11-17T07:56:03.256-05:002014-11-17T07:56:03.256-05:00Re. ‘continually struck by the distance of perspec...Re. ‘continually struck by the distance of perspective I have on my own adolescence,’ I feel I ought to be able to say the same. I'm sure I can say the same, when I stop and think about it, but what comes a good deal more easily for me at 44 is sense of long conflict — false, but really felt — between the wish to get free of adolescence, all the eagerness to ‘put away childish things’ and assert my readiness for the world, and the receding horizon of realized community in everyday responsibility among my peers. I stopped thinking of games as time-worthy (though I was interested in their construction) pretty early. (Wasn't particularly good at them either, but that's another matter.) On the other hand, what I thought of as preparing to be a dad — a lot of babysitting & Sunday-school teaching, among other things — I didn't hesitate to make time for even as a teenager. (Not that I didn't genuinely enjoy it.) Other guys played games and went ahead and became dads, both, of course, while I hung around the margins of their lives. The margin isn't a bad place to be, in fact: I guess that awareness is part of the distance of perspective in my case. Still, nothing like what comes with seeing your own kids approach this set of problems.paul bowmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17409615610994443652noreply@blogger.com