Minesweeper

I can't say that I'm proud to be a minesweeper addict. When I think about it, I get depressed. There are literally countless hours I have wasted on a game that isn't even a good party trick. The only thing minesweeper actually does is let me procrastinate. Which I do a hell of a lot more than I would like to admit.

Oh, I'm good at looking busy, and can show on paper just how productive I have been so far with my life. Yet, when I think about how often I have played minesweeper at the slightest provocation, I am rather ashamed. Uh oh, here I go again.

...Back. In that game, I had tagged fifty-seven of the ninety-nine mines in a minute and twenty-three seconds, before I inadvertently activated a spot that I knew was a mine the moment after I pressed the mouse key. Those kinds of deaths are annoying, but ultimately my own fault so I don't mind all that much. No, what is really frustrating is when I have taged ninety-six of the ninety-nine mines, am about to break one of my records (or at least get on the top ten list again...on the computer I currently type from, every single one of the high scores is marked 'Niña Anita.' If I were a dog I would have run out of pee long ago.) and...voilá, it's down to a scenario where there is no logic involved, just luck. That's the horrible thing about minesweeper. More often than not, after a breathless two-and-a-half minutes, you come to a point where logic no longer holds. It is a matter of sheer luck. And it is rather insulting, after having spent so much time where the game was all about logic. Boo. Hiss.

But that does not stop me.

...Back again. This time, I tagged twenty-one mines in thirty-nine seconds before I mis-tagged one mine and therefore exploded on my next move.

I write much faster on a computer than I do longhand. A few months ago, I had extra time and not all that much to do. I would spend six or seven hours sitting in front of the computer, ostensibly writing. I churned about 25,000 words and an uncompleted (but clear in my mind where it was going) story in four weeks, more or less. Not so bad. But, when I think about that, it is my time spent playing minesweeper and trying to make myself write that rises to the crest of my brain, ready to be plucked as a memory. I probably spent more manpower hours exploding, and if minesweeper were real, I would have, long ago, been blown to my next life as a bloody pulp.

I have played three games since I finished the previous paragraph. The first one ended after I had tagged forty mines in one minute and thirteen seconds. The second ended after I had taged fifty-five mines in two minutes and eight seconds. The third (and fourth; I lied, I played four games. True confession of an addict.) I didn't even bother to look at the score. I was too ashamed that I compusively pressed the little smiley face on top of the screen.

Jesus Christ I need to un-install this game. This is ridiculous and pathetic. I am an adult. I have important things to be doing. Thinking. Or something. I need more discipline. I will never get anything done if I can look at the clock and an hour has unknowingly gone by, in two or three minute increments, punctuated by explosions. Winning is a sense of relief, feeling that the past x (where x = large) number of minutes have not been entirely in vain. No, I have won one! I have triumphed over logic and irrationality! I have survived all potential explosions.!

Unfortunately, this is the execption rather than the rule.

Thirty-nine mines tagged in fifty-two seconds. I think I need to bury my head in the sand, like an ostrich. It's dark down there, right? There's no way I'll be able to see the iridescent monitor?