Another Twin Update, and a Fallacy of Self-Monitoring

Have I bragged about how awesome my new home office here in Atlanta is? Seriously, when I learned I'd be moving here to pursue my doctorate, I imagined a grimy, dirty, tiny, urban apartment. I definitely did not imagine a spacious sunroom office with a balcony surrounded by trees and a creek. Seriously, it's a joy to work in here (and I'm getting a surprising amount of work done today, despite the fact that I was left alone with the twins - they've been pretty quiet and well-behaved, and yes, I'm knocking on wood as I type this. Honestly. Simultaneously. It's a sight to see.).

But that's probably not the kind of thing you're looking for if you read this blog. You're either looking for organizational psychology, baby updates, or a cheap laugh (or if you're Kerry, you're hoping I'll mention you). Well, you, dear reader, are in luck, because you're going to get all three in this post (but I'm not going to mention Kerry).

It's been a while since I've talked about self-monitoring in these (virtual) pages, and as I know for a fact that some of you aren't interested in the slightest in this, I should warn you in advance that I'm going to spend the next four paragraphs talking about it. Feel free to skip down if you'd like.

I Forgot What I Was Blogging About

So let me tell you about Dr. Roberts. He is the professor of my quantitative statistics class at Georgia Tech (translated, that breaks down to 'really hard math stuff'), and he is one heck of a pleasure to learn from. He shares with me both his first name (James) and an unfortunate habit of digression at the slightest provocation... conversational-shiny-object syndrome, as it were. In a lecture about, say, multinomials and they hypergeometric distribution (which he specifically said to mention to our friends and family, because "it'll make you sound really smart"), it's not uncommon for Dr. Roberts to branch off into stories about deer hunting, drunken job interviews, Agent Scully, and his grandmother. Odder yet, in the end, he always seems able to tie it all back into whatever statistics we were discussing. He even taught us a dance that illustrates the concept of the sampling distribution (and which, coincidentally, is very fun to do to the tune of the Beach Boys. Not so much fun with Kenny Chesney).

However, the mere fact that he's personally a fun character doesn't make the subject matter all that much easier (which can be intimidating, given this is just the first statistics class of about four to eleven total). On Thursday, during the fifth week of my doctoral education, I finally had my first lecture that I didn't understand at all. He stood there and talked, and it was undoubtedly brilliant stuff, and it definitely went in my ears because I did hear him... but then it all just slipped right back out again, so that the floor was piled high with brilliant concepts that had leaked out of my poor empty head. I think I almost slipped on a few on my way out the door. I suppose intelligent concepts are slick, kind of like oil.

Trapped in a convention center and bored out of my mind...

... which made me think of the MAME software I just installed on my laptop (a particularly neat little program that tricks your computer into thinking it's a working 80's arcade cabinet, allowing you to play all kinds of pixelated but fun games), which in turn made me think of Donkey Kong.

Great game, lousy name.

That game was followed by Donkey Kong, Jr., which I had a lot of trouble understanding as a little kid. So in the first game, you were Mario, the heroic carpenter, scaling dangerous buildings and construction sites in an attempt to free your girlfriend from the evil giant monkey, Donkey Kong, right? So after I had pumped allowance after allowance into that machine, constantly fending off the evil monkey and rescuing the girl, spending hours and days and weeks helping the carpenter best the ape... Donkey Kong Jr. came out.

And now, all of a sudden, Mario was the bad guy. And I had to play as Donkey Kong Jr., helping poor old Donkey Kong escape from the evil Mario.  As an eight-year-old who thought too much, I was very, very confused. Wasn't Mario the good guy? Wasn't Donkey Kong the bad guy?

I remember at the local arcade they had the two games, Donkey Kong and Jr., right next to each other, and I felt strangely compelled to play them in a logically story-based order. In other words, I'd put a quarter in Donkey Kong, and Mario would defeat Donkey Kong. Then I'd put a quarter in Donkey Kong Jr., and I'd help the little chimp rescue his father, whom I'd just defeated. Then I'd feel obliged to go back to the original game and catch him again, because that damn monkey kidnapped my girlfriend again! Then I felt bad about it, and would put a quarter in Donkey Kong Jr. and rescue him, because darn if he didn't look awfully sad and pathetic in that tiny cage. It got expensive after a while, because I was really much better at Spy Hunter and Ms. Pac-Man.

Young Jim pondered for far too long about what type of moral lesson he should draw from this. Female safety and the sanctity of construction sites, or animal rights and the evils of tiny cages? Was I not listening to enough Kenny Chesney music? Or was I just destined to be confused forever?

Then Donkey Kong 3 came out, and I had my answer.

See, DK3 cleared up the epic story perfectly. In Donkey Kong 3, Mario the carpenter was no longer anywhere to be found (presumably, he was off in the sewers with his twin brother Luigi, a humiliating demotion for the once proud carpenter, no doubt caused by his primate fixation and the fact that, well, to be honest, he was a pretty poor carpenter, evidenced by the way he never actually built anything).  Instead, some other heroic character was taking his place, armed not with high-jumpy boots or hammers, but instead with a can of bug spray. And the only way he could defeat Donkey Kong this time... and I promise I'm not making this up... was to spray the giant monkey's butt repeatedly, until Donkey Kong ran away.

It was some time around this point in my youth that I realized my life never would make much sense.