So Just What is Fun, Anyway?

I'm writing this blog about fun, but what is fun, anyway? I'm not sure that I've ever bothered to define that..... So let's try.

To start with, fun is hardly an absolute concept; it changes with every person, with every situation, with every circumstance. If we pick up a dictionary (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, second college edition, 1984, which I have on my shelf) we'll find among the definitions for "fun" the following: "a source or cause of amusement or merriment, as an amusing person or thing."

Hmmm. I don't think that helps too much. Dictionaries are too formal, anyway. So I googled "fun definition," and I found this: "Recreation is the use of time in a non-profitable way, in many ways also a therapeutic refreshment of one's body or mind. While leisure is more likely a form of entertainment or rest, recreation is active for the participant but in a refreshing and diverting manner. ..." Maybe the Internet is too formal, too.

Or, more likely, maybe defining something as amorphous as "fun" is harder than it looks. How can we define something, in a way understandable to everyone, if the very concept is experienced differently by everyone? Even the question has to be phrased in a convoluted way, if we try not to be completely self-referential when talking about the concept.

As you can see, the difficulties here are many. Is there a way out of this?

Well, yes, there is. We can just admit that "fun" is a purely self-referential concept. There is no activity, which one person defines as fun, which will not be though unutterably dull or useless by at least one other person. Fun is defined internally, by the person engaged in it, and that's that.

So now let's get back to the fun!

It Was Date Night Again

Sometimes, it seems that my life is just a series of recurring events. Fortunately, "Date Night" is one of those recurring events. If you've been reading here, than you'll know that Date Night is when my wife and I go out on a date. We get a sitter for the kids, and we just take off for two or three hours.

In order for Date Night to work, there are rules. These rules change from time to time, as we figure out what works and what doesn't. Last night, the rules were:

1) No talking about the kids. This was important, as said kids had been driving us nuts.

2) No talking about work. This was important, for the same reason.

3) No buying cigars. Last time, we shared a stogie and then tried to kiss....

So what did we do for Date Night? We recaptured our youth; we went to the roller rink! Ah, the joy of strapping wheels to your feet, and trying to stay upright for two hours.... What could go wrong? Well, considering that my wife is an excellent roller skater (and ice skater), and that I am not, I'll leave that question to your imagination. Suffice it to say that I will be invoking Rule 4 next time:

We always alternate who chooses the date.

Otherwise, it's just not fair, is it?

Mobile Phone Games

I got a new cell phone recently. Nothing to sneeze at really, but it's better than my last cell phone, gets a better signal, is significantly smaller and lighter, and, well, it's my new toy. I'm having some fun with it.

So the best part of this new cell phone is, it has some games on it. It's not like I never knew about mobile games; of course I've heard of them, I do live in the 21st Century, even if I am a little bit of a technological idiot. But there are some things that just don't "click" for me, and games on a cell phone were definitely on that list. They weren't important to me. I needed a cell phone to make phone calls (rad idea, isn't it?), or to store phone numbers (but only as a backup to the PDA, which is itself a backup to the old-fashioned pen and paper). I have been known to use the cell phone as a small hammer, when I needed a tack to hold securely in the wall. Definitely not a recommended use.

I'm digressing a lot here. I meant to talk about cell phones and video games.

I like video games. I really do. So while I was playing with the new cell phone, I was happy to discover.... a built in games folder! With two games already uploaded! I would have played them longer, except the phone rang. It was my wife, asking for someone's phone number.

Another Basement Find

So, I've written here before about finding some good books in a box in the basement. Well, I'm still cleaning out the overstuffed storage space in the house, and this past weekend I found a real treasure: Wally Pleasant's Houses of the Holy Moly. I haven't heard this music since (my restless) college years, and I couldn't wait to try the tape in an old boombox. It worked.

Yup, a tape that had sat in a box in the basement for 6 years (the box was labeled 2002) worked, and I sat back and took a break from housework on a Sunday afternoon and listened to some wonderful, funny old songs, like "Stupid Day Job," "Dysfunctionally Yours," and "I'm Nice." It really took me back....

To 1996, when I was first introduced to the music of Wally Pleasant by a coworker who was also nice enough to copy the Holy Moly CD onto a tape for me. A few nights later, I went with a bunch of my coworkers to a bar at 9 Mile and Woodward where Wally was playing. We tossed back a few (too many) brews, and enjoyed an evening of comedic college alt-rock-folk. It was something normal to do, when you're 22....

Listening to this tape, it seems that Wally really captured something of those years. It felt good to hear it again. I wonder if I'll ever find the Wally Pleasant CDs I bought in the late 90s? I think they died in the car accident, though...

If you want, you can check out some samples of Wally Pleasant's music here. It's definitely worth a look.

The Toast of the Town

The other night, my parents came over and stayed with the kids, while my wife and I got out for a while. We played a game we hadn't done since college. We call it 'Toast of the Town,' and it goes like this:

Go out late at night, to all of the late-night breakfast-type restaraunts you can find, and order toast. You can order coffee with it, but no meal. I'm talking places like Denny's, or Ram's Horn, or Sunshine Cafe.... any of those chain-type places, or the Mom-and-Pops that sometimes take their place in smaller towns and suburbs. IHOP is particularly good for this.

See how long you can go on toast and coffee, before you start feeling nauseous. Of course, back in college, there were a couple of bottles of Boone's Farm to go between breakfast places, and at the end, that famous Moons Over MyHammy if your stomach hadn't completely turned yet, but you get the idea. Eating wasn't the point.

I'm not sure what the point was, anymore. We didn't get very far. At the second place, we stopped and ordered pancakes and scrambled eggs and hot chocolate, and sat around remembering what happened when. It would have helped if the scrambled eggs were better.

Anyway, none of that matters. It was another sort of date night, at one in the morning, and every couple really needs that. It doesn't just keep you together; it's also fun.

A Day With the Kids

So I'm home from work today. The kids have chicken pox. Both of them. At 5 and 3. Oh, the joy is never ending. And yeah, that's sarcasm.

My wife escaped to her job. I have more sick time piled up, so I'm with the kids. I took them to the doctor, who confirmed that, yes, they do have chicken pox, and no, there's nothing much I can do about it, and then I brought them back home. We stopped for calamine lotion on the way, and now they're covered with little pink dots. They each have some footed pyjamas, which is good, because those'll help stop them from scratching everything, and spreading it more. In the meantime, they itch. And scratch.

And ask questions. Like this one: "Daddy, what is a chicken pox?"

That was fun to explain. "Well, it's a disease..."

"NO!"

"...that lots of children get when they're little. Even your Mommy and Daddy had it."

"What does it do?"

"You know the little red bumps on your body? And your sore throat?"

"Yes."

"That's what chicken pox does. And once one kid in a school gets it, they all get it."

"You mean the one kid shares?"

Sometimes, it's really hard not to laugh. But I managed to keep a straight face, this time, and told her that this isn't really like sharing, even if she did give it to her sister. Ah, well, she'll learn. I'm gonna go set up the oatmeal bath.

File Sharing

Sometimes, I'm a little behind the times. That's OK, though, because my wife is usually right up to speed. To give an example:

We've all heard of file sharing, music downloading services, and other fun internet based bypass routes around copyright laws. You know, things like Napster. I never got into that, mainly because I'm not that computer savvy, but also because, as a writer by profession, I have a certain respect for copyrights. Anyway, my wife is not a writer, has no such qualms, and is more computer-knowledgable than I am, so she found some free file sharing services and set them up on our home computer the day after we lost our CD collection in our stolen car (which is a whole 'nother story altogether!).

Yesterday, she sat me down and showed me how it works. Today, I have a dozen great tunes that I'd thought I'd lost forever, unless I shelled out the dough to buy the CDs again.

We had some fun last night. She showed me how to search the file sharing service, how to set up the server, how to select songs for download, how to connect to the system, and then we sat down and looked for our mutual favorites. I didn't expect to have a good time doing that, but I did.

And then she showed me that the same system can be used for movies and TV shows. Never again will I have to be without Star Trek!