December 23, 2011
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An Overwrought Analogy And A Funny Gaming Website
For a few years, I lived in an above-the-garage apartment. It had an overhanging deck at the back, with a set of stairs leading up to it from ground level. A couple summers ago, for reasons I cannot remember, one evening I came home with a wet set of clothes, including blue jeans.
What I do remember is that the weather was hot, cloudless, and relentlessly sunny. I just laid out the clothes over the railing, putting some sort of improvised weight on them to keep them from blowing away.
Then, in classic Eric Bailey fashion, I forgot they were out there, largely because I was rarely out on the deck.
As a result, days or maybe a couple weeks later, I finally got around to retrieving the formerly wet set of clothes. The result was interesting: The parts of the jeans that were directly exposed to sunlight were faded into a very light color. Considering the haphazard way in which I had laid them out, the effect was by no means symmetrical or orderly; what I now had, undesirably, was a pair of jeans with a wildly two-toned look that varied between a classic blue tone and an almost-white pallor in wide swaths.
Since these were jeans that fit me and had no holes, I was a little saddened. In my eyes, they were ruined. They looked startlingly different, and very chaotic, not appealing to my eyes and certainly, I would guess, not standing much of a chance at a favorable view by anyone else either.
Eventually, on a whim, and possibly due to being behind on laundry, I wore them out. As in, in public. Like, people actually saw me wearing this weird pair of two-tone, sun-faded, crazy-lookin’ jeans.
And?
They liked ‘em. I actually got complimented on what they believed was a hip, chic style choice. Even my then-girlfriend, now my wife, gave an approving nod.
Here I was with what at one time had been just an average pair of blue jeans, then accidentally changed into what I thought was a horror, but in truth was now enjoyed more fondly than before.
Why can’t more things in life work out that way?
Of course, now they have holes in them and I likely need to get rid of the pair, so maybe I should not drag the analogy out too far.
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Just a quick plug for what has, for a while now, been among my favorite gaming websites: Flailthroughs, a blog dedicated to chronicling the adventures of a team of gamers who play Japanese games… without knowing the Japanese language. Check it out. Enjoy. Spread the word.
