So tell Me Doc, Am I Schizophrenic?

TGIF again, and tomorrow looks like good hangover weather. Just returned after a walk in the maul, a visit to the super market, and a visit to the booze shop. They gassed me both in the maul and in the super market but missed the booze shop. The maul gas was too dilute to identify, but the supermarket version was definitely left lung gas. Gassing continues in the apartment at a slightly elevated level of about 20% of the pre-blog level, most of which happens in the living room.

Very interesting was my tape (the delete key does not work) of Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers' 'The Dark Side of the Universe.' I watched it after Today. Watching stuff like this is about as close as I ever get to a mystical experience without the aid of drugs. Very good show. I even learned a new term (which I forgot - standby...) 'super-symmetric particles.' I understand the astronomy very well but the sub-atomic physics is a bit murky. For example, a WIMP is a Weakly Interactive Massive Particle thought to exist - but not known to exist - which may explain, at least in part, the missing mass of the Universe. This is heady stuff compared to the state of Astronomy back in the days I bought my first telescope.

Bought a new video game the other day, Rainbow six 3, Raven Shield. Now learning how to play it. This one is probably an older version of Ghost Recon, only 19 bucks. Ghost Recon was quite good and I expect this one to be almost as good. I like 'first person shooters.' The best of the bunch so far is - in my humble opinion - Half Life. The absolute best video game of all time is Civilization III. One of the qualities which makes this game tops in my opinion is that when you play the game again you play in a new world. You can play the game over and over but you never play in the same world twice. Apparently the program creates a new world every time. It is sorta like the eternal rebirth of Buddhist mythology but not quite. I also like Microsoft Flight Simulator, of course, and I have spent countless hours above 25,000 feet cruising the world, as well as many hairy hours doing instrument approaches to various airports in bad weather. The latest version has a passable simulation of ATC, and the 'scenery' (World Geography according to Microsoft) improves with each iteration. Myst was also a glorious game, much different from those above. I have one of the sequels to Myst in my current inventory (Uru) but so far I have not figured out how to 'journey' away from the starting location. I come back to it from time to time, so far unsuccessfully. This game takes the edge off my arrogance. It takes me an hour or so to sharpen back up, so I load it only infrequently. I could 'cheat' of course, but for some reason I refuse to do it. I often cheat in C-III, so I have no moral compunctions preventing me from cheating in video games... except Uru. I suppose it's the principle of the thing: I figured out Myst without cheating; I ought to be able to figure out Uru.

So tell me, Doctor, am I schizophrenic?