At Least, In Pairs

Newsflash: Tail Bites Dog

As best as I can make out ( I did have to perform some intricate translation from video-game speak to current English), some hacker organization codenamed 'Anonymous' has shut down (hacked) the PlayStation Network and the PlayStation Store as retaliation against Sony's attempts to sue them for hacking. Could neither of them see this coming?

Hackers run a healthy business servicing gamers who want to bypass difficult phases, artificially boost their reps and prematurely unlock the booty-chest of rewards for elevated prestige.
The hackers' latest strategy which has met with stern disapproval from Sony, is a 'jailbreak' which allows players to downgrade their PlayStation system to bypass the sophisticated upgrades which have all sorts of firewalls and retardants to 'creative gaming'. 

With the Network down, players can't link up online and have to play with the machine ghosts, rather than with their Avatar-clad Clansmen.
I suppose I should be glad that my son wants 'real human' interaction and refuses to play against the machine. He likes to chit-chat while doing battle: blue-tooth talking to Queens, Austria, Florida or where ever his buddies' bodies are hunkered down. My son, whose handle is Tizzik, can be heard calling to Ching-wing for cover, or chastising Krispy for shooting him by accident.
To speak with Ching-wing or Krispy today, Tizzik will have to make a long distance phone call, though I doubt there is anything they'd want to talk about now that the system is down. Funny how that is.

Luckily, Tizzik has many flesh-and-blood friends, (you know, like brick-and-mortar stores) twenty of whom came to his birthday party last month.
For the first time, girls were on the invited list, though only one brave member of that species showed.
My anxiety level went way up - didn't they travel in packs, or at least in pairs? We tried to keep her entertained with metal-ring puzzles and wooden 3D brain teasers, as well an origami kit.
For a moment it looked good - a couple of the boys got interested in the puzzles and left the gaming consoles. I got misty-eyed, thinking I had a real live party on my hands, but sadly some of the boys drifted back to the games, some went into the backyard, and we were back to the one birdie on the wall.

She was a real trouper, though - always smiling and polite. My husband and I loved her because she was on our side, i.e the outside. We catered to her every whim, and marveled at what great friends she and Tizzik must be for him to invite her here just to ignore her. We gawked covertly from the kitchen - a cordless free-standing, fully alert tween capable of coherent conversation - a classic model! We looked over at the boys, thumping on their control pads, yelping and howling - where on earth was she going to find a match?

My Son's Diction Lines

Bridging the Great Divide

Inanities

Noob - Slang for the slang newbie, meaning: clueless.
(Further slangified to Nub, just to keep me qualifying.)


Try-harding - video-game speak for trying hard. Putting one's heart and soul into something. Usually intoned with awe, as when someone is holed up in a building lobby, ambushed by enemy forces and he's giving them all he's got. Superseded in nobility only by...


Martyrdom - video-game speak for running out of the building lobby into the enemy ambush, and letting them give you all they've got...so your friends can escape.

Fail! - Exclaimed in response to an unsuccessful attempt of any kind. Used to express frustration or glee, depending on the situation. 

I'm bored! - This can happen without warning at any time.There's no explaining it.


Profanities
 
"My G*d, I'm Lagging!" - Son is experiencing slow Internet connection due to mother's blogging or father's Internet bill-paying. Parents are encouraged to wrap up their activities promptly and clear the lanes of the superhighway. 

"My teacher is so sexist!"... "The girls get to do whatever they want!"
- Son says the word 'sexist' and pauses to take my temperature. Delivers the next sentence, if necessary - so he can turn this into a vocabulary lesson.

Tight mad - Pissed off


Banalities 

Mad hot - Cool. 
However, when I say it, I get the look. 
Apparently, this expression has been passé since the release of the documentary 'Mad Hot Ballroom'.


Subtleties

GOML - Get on my level.  
This acronym is usually transmitted to an outmatched opponent during a video game, and means simply - you're a loser.

Peculiarities 

No-No Square - Off-limits area of one's anatomy.
(Sometimes delivered with a gesture delineating said territory.)




Profundities:

"When you have correction tape, you make more mistakes."

Of Passwords and Prestige

My 12 year old son is a video game junkie. This I say without a smile or even a hint of one. There is nothing I like about the fact that he prefers to spend many hours a day on his PS3 rather than doing any other activity. It used to be that he would play FIFA soccer or NBA basketball, but lately its just one game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II - aka MW2.  He plays this game with his friend down the block, his cousin in Queens, a friend in Florida, and his cousin's cousin in Austria - at the same time. The ridiculous result of this arrangement is that these boys would rather sit at the game console in their own homes than meet in person to play. Meeting in person has a major drawback - they are away from their own machines and profiles - i.e. they are away from their game 'identities': their K-D ratios, and their 'rank'.

If your K-D (kill to death) ratio sucks, you are labeled a 'Noob'(slang for the slang: newbie). That's such an undesirable state of affairs that if one of your friends is a really good player, you may consider giving him your password, so that he can play 'as you' and raise your rank or prestige. The other way this can go is - someone who knows your password and wants to ruin your rep can play 'as you' and destroy your rank.

Recently my son's account was hacked, basically hijacked. Someone signed in, changed the password and locked him out. Since he had shared his password with a couple of his friends, he had at least that many suspects. His level of distress was greater only when he learned that the 'OpTic Nation sniper clan' he'd been invited to was a fake (a whole other story). The process of smoking out the offender was unsettling for him to go through, and painful for me to observe.

It did turn out to be one of his friends, though not the one he suspected. The deed was done in retaliation for an imagined slight - but my son made light of the incident to keep the friendship. We reset all his passwords and I told him never to share them again, which translated to 'fight your own battles and don't trust anybody'. In the end it was this that he had the hardest time with.