Pinball
There is something about pinball machines that I just get, that I just like, I don’t know what it is. perhaps we can look at some of the best cell phone games out there. The ones "physics" related, they actually call them that “physics” angry birds is one that comes to mind.
There is something natural and organic that we like, I think this is the thing with pinball. As humans we like to know how the world works and we are naturally attracted to things that confirm this, add gamification to the mix and it is almost unstoppable. Or at least that way to me.
A steel ball of some weight doing its thing in a world that we designed. There is something more. Perhaps it was the computer game that Frank got on his computer and Wesley and I spent hours playing, there was something so addictive about that. Even now it is hard to find something on XBOX that comes close (I did) but then it was something different. Frank also had his own pinball machine. It was this “surfer” thing.
We never got to play it, we just saw it, it was broken or something… now that I am older and I have money, I think about buying these sort of things. I want to buy that machine, but when I looked it up online it was selling for about 12k. So Anyway, I digress.
Pinball? There is a great book written by Haruki Murakami called Pinball, 1973 in that book he fell in love with playing a pinball machine called “spaceship” you can actually look it up and purchase that too. But again it is too much.
These pinball machines are works of art, with whole biographies behind them. the complexity and simplicity all rolled up in one. Ok, I am getting too far away from the truth here. Let me get back to the truth. I love pinball, I got this game on XBOX after reading Murakami and wanted to get back into it. This game is insane, you can actually buy all the classic tables for 4 bucks a pop. Here are some the pinball games I am playing now. Black hole, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, twilight zone. They are all different, some are leaned more and the ball moves fast some are slow, leaned low and have extra flippers. It is great. These are the simple things in my life. I like things that take me away, booze, books, Zelda, Pinball, my job, my mind and my dreams. Being me is always good when I am multiplied times ten, sometimes eleven.
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