It’s Impossible NOT to Pay For Candy Crush

~ NormalNobody ~ 1 Comment

At first, I never wanted to try the game.  I’m a little late coming in, I know.  But I would watch the annoying screen shots, see the commercials, and get initiated by Facebook ads every time my friends joined, leveled up, or wanted to bug me to give them some bonus for a game I didn’t have.  I got about 20 alerts from friends A DAY just to play this game.  And just watching the ads gave me a sugar high.  I refused.

Then, one day, I was bored.  I wanted to see what this was all about.  Now I’m a Candy Crush addict.  What I didn’t know at the time of joining that this “free” game is impossible to stay “free.”  I thought I could do it.  I mean, on principal, I feel if you pay for a game just once, that’s fine.  You own it, it’s yours, entirely.  But this idea just to pay for bonuses, bombs, cheats, etc… to me it’s just stupid.  I mean, sure, sometimes you have to give money to make money.  But I’m not making money, I’m matching candy.  I figured I was on to them.  I was going to play this game without ever having to spend a dime.  It was my mission.  I wasn’t going to pay a single cent.  Because I figured once I started paying, I would never stop.

I played for hours, weeks, maybe a month.  Patiently going through lives and doing every free way to earn bonuses, lives, candy, bombs, and whatever other fun shaped sugar high colors they gave me.  I never bothered a friend for anything, never paid a cent.  I made it through whole worlds.  I thought I was smarter than they were.  I found the glitch.  Patience, not payment.

Yeah, well, they designed for people like me too.  I got to some point in the game where you had to “buy” a ticket on a helicopter to take you to the next world to continue.   This was the second time I reached such a place, but the first time all I had to patiently do was wait the next day to board… I think it was a bus.  So, I turned off my game <gasp> and waited patiently for the game to reload my lives and cross over in 24 hours.

Only it didn’t.  In insisted I either pay for my ticket, or bother friends for one.  I refused to pay.  I thought about asking friends, but Candy Crush kindly reminded me that I only use Facebook for product coupons and discounts by liking pages.  And since I didn’t want to invite friends to a page solely dedicated to corporations that talked to one another offering more free discounts if they signed up as friends, according to Facebook and Candy Crush, I am friendless :/

I admit, it’s a little embarrassing that the people who make Candy Crush think I’m a cheap friendless loser.  However, they are kindly willing to exploit that friendlessness by now offering me no choice but to find SOME friend, or pay to continue to play.

Of course, I have friends who have Facebook.  It’s just not an app I find particularly useful in my life right now.  Okay, I think Facebook is down right stupid, old, and a bunch of trolls, catfish, and invites from people I don’t know and old friends that upon reconnecting… I find out all the reasons I STOPPED talking to them IN THE FIRST PLACE.  Not to mention the merit of Facebook is based on exactly how many friends you have, and since I’m not inclined to be friends with strangers who could be a myriad of any person in history besides the person they really are, I tend to only be friends with REAL people.  Meaning, people I’ve met and spoken to at points in my life.  That doesn’t give me a huge total.  Then, some one who saw that small total said, “Well, it makes you look like a catfish.  Unless you have thousands of “friends” people think it’s bogus.” So, being my own self makes me bogus.  So, Facebook went to coupons, likes, and anything else that could get me 20% off + free shipping.

Now, I could create a Candy Crush Friends Facebook page if I really wanted too.  Sure.  That’s the beauty of Facebook.  But, when calling in favors of good friends who really want to help you out, Candy Crush is really the least thing I would want to bother my friends about.  And Candy Crush bothered me all the time (see, 20 plus posts per day per friend that posts).  So, I’m a good enough friend to know that when I need a favor, I better make it good.  And my request for a ticket, candy bomb, or other sugar crusted cartoon treat, is not exactly the favor I have in mind when it comes to getting things I need in life.

Unfortunately, I think I’m addicted.  I close my eyes and see the little candy colors.  I almost cried when I had to uninstall the game because without a ticket, my Candy Crush dreams of finally seeing if there is, indeed, an end to the game were ruined.  I want to play.  I tried Candy Crush Soda, but I can’t stand it.  The little bottles are too hard to see, the concept of the game is lost.  Too much going on for a game I want to relax and think just enough through, but not strategize how the soda effects what direction the candy falls from and how it will impact the next 20 moves.  And, by the time I figure it out, I’m out of lives.  At least on Candy Crush, I had the chance to play and it was fun.

So, I’m writing this in what feels like real Sugar Crush Withdrawal.  I may need rehab, or some kind of 12 step meeting.  I have downloaded the game twice again so far just to see if it would give me another life by patiently waiting for it.

I guess it would be easier to go out and find a life.  Or just pay the .99 cents for a ticket.  But, I found in the play store, if I click “Find similar apps” there are a whole bunch of other rip offs, just like Candy Crush.  Of course, just like Candy Crush they want your money, your friends, and whatever else they can exploit to keep you paying for your addiction.  Like any drug dealer, there’s always another one down the street willing to take your life away.  But at least it can keep me playing a game, although slightly different.  It FEELS like a different Candy Crush level at least.  Hopefully I’ll get bored of this addiction, and move onto something else all together.  In the meantime, writing this has taken me away from my new addiction: Ice Crush.  I must get back to that now, I think my lives have refilled.

Honey, The Kids are High on Nutmeg

~ NormalNobody ~ 3 Comments

I don’t know where to start on this one, folks.  Just when you thought you cleared your pantries of expired medications, locked up the Robitussin, threw out the whipped cream…

Smoked all the pot, licked all the acid, snorted all the markers, and dusted all your keyboards…

You locked up your liquor cabinet, flushed all the coke, monitor all the friends, call all the parents, make sure some one is going to be there at every party they go to…

You’ve totally been a diligent parent to your child, now growing to pre-teen and teen years.  You’ve talked to them about all the drugs like all the school handbooks told you to.  You monitor their webcams, blogs, chat messages, tweets.  You talk to the teachers, you watch for all the signs, you still make sure the program on TV they are watching isn’t porn…

Your a good parent.  You’ve completely teen-proofed the house of anything those little brats will get a hold of lest you become one of those parents you see on the show “Intervention,” snubbing your nose.  “I would never let it get that bad.  That would never happen to MY family, or MY child.  I AM PREPARED.”

Well, you didn’t lock up the spice drawer oh vigilant parent.  That stuff you make your famous cookies out of at every bake sale you attended to promote whatever your elementary tot was doing…

This is now your demise.

Yes, apparently, if you eat enough nutmeg, and I mean swallow tons of it, you can get a “trip,” much like that on acid, but with more throwing up involved.  (But hey, you will throw up lots of rainbow sludge so that’s something, right?).  Did I mention this trip, unlike acid, will last you 48 STRAIGHT HOURS!!!

Thus is the new trend.  The 48 hour nutmeg high.  I heard this on the news.  I looked it up on the internet, this is very true.  Because we got wise to the “let me drink all the cough medicine” high, so kids had to get more inventive.

Just a quick pause right here, before I go any further.  WHO TRIED THIS!! I mean, before it became a trend, some kid had to be sitting in mom’s basement (I mean, I think anyone who would do this probably still lives with mom and dad) and go, “I’m bored.  I have no Robitussin,  I have no money/too young to buy weed, the liquor is locked up.  What do I do? I wonder what would happen if I just ate all my mom’s nutmeg.”

And in the 48 hour hallucinogenic high, sometime between having a party with people who aren’t there, and throwing up their brains in the toilet (it makes you really sick according to internet reports.  Doesn’t this sound fun), they  managed to tweet, blog, and call every friend in the world to try it.

And now we have a trend.  And who knows if any other spice is safe.  Maybe that Oregano is worth more than just an herb we try to trick the police into THINKING it is (because we all carry around little baggies of oregano, yanno, in case we encounter a pizza that has no flavor).  We just haven’t ingested enough pounds of it at once to know better yet.  Any takers on that?

While we are on weird trends to get high, in my quest to find out about nutmeg, I stumbled upon something called “I-Dosing.”  Are you ready folks? Want to know what your kid is really listening to on their headphones.

Music, that if sitting in a dark room, and pumped directly into the ears, has hallucinogenic effects.  No, really, I’m not kidding.  Kids really think that listening to this annoying music (that sounds much like what happens when I accidentally call a company’s fax number)  will get them high.  There’s a method for this too.  You sit in a dark room with headphones.  And listen…. Don’t believe me?

I-Doser. Get High Legally and cheap with sounds!

I guess my dilemma about this one is, with all the dumb things my kid could be doing to destroy their body in an attempt to reach extreme Euphoria, should I be mad if this is the path they chose? I mean, hey, it beats thinking they are out raiding the grocery stores of nutmeg, or any other spices some kid hasn’t ingested enough of yet to get a buzz.  I mean, really, can I be mad if my child is open to trying a more metaphysical high?

Or is this the new gateway drug? Because you know what’s going to happen.  They will all be together at a party, listening to… whatever you call that stuff (is it even music?), and one kid will turn around and say, “Hey, do you know what would make this REALLY cool?”

And then I’m all out of nutmeg when it’s time to make Christmas cookies.

The Chapel Hill Murders

~ NormalNobody ~ 2 Comments

I think it was an episode of Law and Order SVU where the cops showed up to an anti-abortion rally where they got wind a doctor would be killed.  When they asked one of the protesters why they would kill a man, he responded by asking the same question back.  “We are here to preserve life, not take it away.”

That stayed with me.  We are absolutely entitled to our beliefs, but killing people over them makes our point hypocritical, and lost.  It says nothing but that one person can prove he has more hate in his heart than he does for the idea he’s supporting.

With that, three beautiful Muslim women were killed, putting two families in heartbreak, simply because one guy didn’t believe in Muslims.  I’m so sorry for your loss.  There’s no words I can say here that would make it right.  I’m sorry that humanity itself has let you down.

If there is any good in this, it’s that some psychopath with a gun who thinks he’s fighting for freedom will now live and die in the confines of an unfree prison.  He will never take another free breath again.  Hopefully, the officers will continue to give him, over and over, the most slippery slab of soap any prison has ever had.

Wherever we go, wherever we wind up, the words hate and wrong will become meaningless.  It doesn’t bring them back, and it doesn’t make their loss any easier to take.  The real injustice would be to let it destroy you.  Don’t let him win.  Don’t let him destroy you.  They are okay.  And wherever they are, they are unhated.

Introduction to a Normal Nobody

~ NormalNobody ~ 4 Comments

There was a quote I found, by Brigitte Nicole, that state’s “Don’t underestimate me.  I know more than I say, think more than I speak, and notice more than you realize.”

Okay, so this is officially my first post.  I think it made another one for me with instructions.   I was supposed to edit it, and I didn’t want to, but never went back to delete.  So, this could technically be my second post, and my first post probably sounds like an odd drunk rant.  So, with the first impression out of the way, Namaste.

The point of the name is to tell people that I’m you’re everyday girl in Jersey, stuck in my 30’s on the cusp of Gen X switching over to the Millennials.   And yes, I’m from the shore, and no, it’s not like that.  People do anything once you put a camera on them that wouldn’t happen normally.  Plus, I’ve lived in many areas of Jersey, not just the shore, and it’s a great state and I wouldn’t leave it for the world.  That, and you’re not going to find pictures of me all over the internet, with my smiling face photo-bombing everywhere I go, pictures of the food I eat, or act like I’m some sort of celebrity on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever else our culture prides itself on using to make everyday people somehow confuse themselves as a Hollywood starlet.  I’m not anybody, and don’t want to be.  More importantly, I know I’m not anybody, and I know you don’t care what my breakfast looked like.

Anyway, I’m just like you.  Only I have a story to tell.  I’ve been through a lot, seen a lot, and have a lot of knowledge and insight to share.  When I was very young, I always said that when I died, I wanted to change one person’s life.  Just one person, for the better.  This is the quest to do that.  And I’m not going to throw a bunch of moral dribble or talk all about God or try to sell you an idea like you have to believe it.  This is going to be fun, I promise 🙂

It may sound like a bunch of complaining at first, but I’m not.  I laugh as I write it.  It’s hard to tell emotion from words on a screen (but I will try my best) and almost every time I write, I encourage the reader to take a grain of salt, and see the humor.  Of course, I may get into more serious things as well.  But maybe the fact that I have such a fun personality and promise to make it fun for you, you will stick around if such darker stuff arises.  Because, like I said, I have a story to tell.

The second reason I chose the name Normal Nobody is the pun of it.  Everyone is a some one.  And none of us are normal.

“Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.”

Some one told me that was Shakespeare.  It’s not.  It’s by Jean de La Bruyere, which is a lot harder to say than Shakespeare, but I got to give it to the right guy.