Gut reaction: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I’m speaking more for Ben than me, though I must admit a month without videogames sounds pretty painful too.

It would be interesting to see you both do this for an entire month and see if your reactions to/conclusions about each medium are still the same. Like you both said, the “controls” in this experiment were minimal in a sense, and the time required wasn’t that bad. ^_^ Now a month…that could truly change habits, and withdrawals may be more severe. ~_*

I’m willing, though admittedly there is so MUCH science fiction out there that I can only provide what I have read. But it sounds like fun.

Pete, it’s a deal. I haven’t read The Forever War, but the approach you mention is a great idea. I’ll get to it as soon as I can.

One really fun thing about sci-fi is that you can get most of the best stuff relatively cheap at lots of used book stores.

Some people say society is oversaturated with books because it is so easy to get published these days. I agree, but I also sorta appreciate it because the incredible variety wipes out any excuses you may have about whether there is anything of interest out there for you… there always is!

And yes, you’re allowed to include sci-fi fantasies like Star Wars or Transformers if you like.

I’ll make you a deal, you keep reading books and occasionally post on facebook more suggestions.

I recently read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Really loved it. I have recently gotten on a classic Sci Fi kick (started by the Foundation Series that you lent me) I found the Forever War by going on Wikipedia and checking which books had won both the nebula and Hugo awards. If you get a chance to check it out I think you might enjoy it (assuming that you haven’t read it yet, which is a bad assumption much of the time)

If someone “unfriends” you it is a good indicator that something is going on in either your relationship with them or else something significant is happening in their life.

True story. I noticed a few months back that I had lost at least one friend. I’m not one to track all of that obsessively (though I hear there are programs available for the uptight), but I had noted a day earlier that I had just hit a milestone number and come back the next day to find my friends-total ending in a nine instead of a zero.

I had no way of knowing who it is save for the fact that I had just written a Note and was tagging friends I thought might enjoy it and one particular friend was not taggable. I thought maybe he had quit Facebook for some reason, but after the briefest of detective work (i.e. searching his name), I discovered that he was still around and still friends with all my friends. So I drop him a friend request and get the best message in response maybe a couple hours later.

He began with: “I’d might as well address this now because as much as I’ve tried to ignore the issue over the years, it’s simply not going to put itself to bed, and I really should have said how I feel earlier.” Then he adds some backstory. Then he drops what might be the best and most forthright line in all the internet: “So what am I getting at? Simply put, I don’t like you, The Dane.”

Pretty wild, huh? Okay, he used my real name and not The Dane, but I’m trying to stay in character here. It boiled down mostly to political disagreement combined with me being forthright in my opinions. But all this to say: when someone unfriends you, it really may speak to some unspoken problem in your relationship.