Flappy Bird: Tap Tap Tapping Your Way into Despair

Tap. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap tap. Tap. Game Over. “Damn!”

Tap. Game Over. “That's it, I’m never playing again!”

..............................

…Tap tap. Tap tap tap tap…. Tap tap…. Tap… tap tap tap tap… tap… Game Over. “Aw, damnit! So close!”

Seated in the fetal position on his sofa, his phone gripped in sweat and tensing fingers, the teenager stares at his screen with a look so angry it could set a fire more powerful than a phoenix’s fart.

The teenager has been in this position for almost half the day. His eyes have not wandered anywhere beyond the screen, and his phone is so hot that it can warm a snake’s enclosure for an entire decade. His head has a bald spot - not in the normal place where men lose begin to bald, and it is not at all hereditary, but it is a bald spot caused by continuos tugging of hair in frustration. But the teenager presses on. For all over Facebook, sit the varied scores of his peers, all higher than his highest. This is another chance for him to be better that someone at something unimportant to the next month of his life and after. He must take this opportunity, seize it, for if he does not, he will lose the chance to be marvelled by the girls that he has on his Facebook.

Again, he tries, and again, he fails. He cannot see any harm in sitting there all day. The only harm he sees is the inability to hold a record score. What he does not realize yet, though, is that his battery is running out, and if he were to score a high score, his battery might no last enough for him to see it, screenshot it, share it, and bask in all its glory. ‘Get Ready!’ his screen beams, lit up with a dull background colour, ensuring that the teenager keeps his eyesight after the long hours he spends playing this game.

The bird on the screen is flapping slowly in mid-air, next to the two ‘tap’ prompts, awaiting the teenager’s touch. The teenager finally sighs, and presses again his finger to the screen, thinking that this time, this time will grant him the score that he is after. A bold white zero sits on top of the screen, waiting to be changed, and taunting the teenager at the same time. In the distance are skyscrapers, with lit windows, probably filled with people shaking their heads at how long the boy has spent on this app.

He lost again, a loud thud noise tells him so. ‘It is a game of skill,’ he thinks to himself. ‘If that is the case, then I guess I have no skills.’ This game does just that. It puts the teenager and every other person with it downloaded down. It deems them useless. If they cannot get a score higher than ten, it does not display a medal on the scoreboard after they lose. In fact, there sits an empty hole where the medal would have sat, indicating that the player does not even deserve to view its pixels. And beneath the scoreboard, sits an innocent looking white button with a green arrow-head in it – ‘go on, play again,’ the game taunts. And so, the teenager does.

The winged bird with no tail and huge eyes is led by the teenager through seemingly narrow pipe openings. One mere touch of any part of a pipe, and the game is well and truly over. It is a game of balancing skills, the skill to know when to tap or let the bird freefall – let it freefall for long and soon enough it will have its pixelated beak planted in the Super Mario-esque grass. Tap the screen an additional tap and the bird will become a Flappy Turd, gliding down a pipe until it is nestled on the hard floor.

There is no pause button - one must not think once to ever pause it and get on with the game at a later time, be there some form of distraction at a time where a good score might be evident. The teenager must continue playing despite the needs of anyone around him depending on where he is in the duration of high score attempts. The washing will have to wait, dinner will have to get cold, the dog will have to walk itself, for there is no pause button and he again, must press on.

While the teenager taps away, other teenagers tap away too. During work breaks, lunch times at school, meeting conferences, restaurant gatherings, parties or an entire day, all people become teenagers at heart when playing Flappy Bird, tap tap tapping their lives away, for that high score that will most likely never come.

Raw Rhyming Raps

There are many days when I listen to all sorts of music and there is none better soothing than having a mildly rough African-American voice gently trumpeting lines of rhymes that can somehow relate to my experiences in life.

Someone else in the barren world has experienced what you have, and thanks to our advance in technology. We are now able to connect in more intimate levels than mere phonecalls, levels where one can download, purchase or transfer a voice message that resonates within themselves and play it over and over again. They have their own personal companion and the relationship cannot be lost because there exists no mutuality beside the experiences being the same. The singer most likely will never know the listener and the listener will never know the singer. The singer will be relieved in that their fan can connect and their fan will be relieved that there is someone to connect with, and in most cases this connection is difficult to break.

Connections require strenuous efforts on both parts of connectors involved. Like magnetic links, two ends needs to be physically close in order to connect, and in the case of humans, other layers of connections must be met too. When it comes to rap, the only connector is experience. All other connectors like similar habits or interests die off because all humans go through phases, and though experiences are what links one to rap music, experiences can also tear people and rap music apart. If anything, though, rap music assists one in acquiring a sense of temporary relief, a sense of briefly ignoring things or those who rile one in their life. One becomes attached to their oversized headphones, and when one wears noise-cancelling headphones they sometimes are cancelling the world.

Some people cannot comprehend why it is that some rap music contains derogative terms, racial slurs or profanity. Those three make up a layer of barbed wire, protecting the underlying message contained within the song, contained within the raw words and the harsh terms. Sometimes the underlying message is so painful that it is too heartfelt for the rapper to share with the world what it is, so they have to hand it to the world on the casing of a bullet. Explosive, and deadly, raw rhyming raps attack on sight, spitting words like acid burning through the very walls that some people work so hard to build.

Raw rhyming raps channel through the music underground and penetrates through the protective layers of listeners, resonating within their very present state of minds.

Deadly Dolphins

photo source

"It was almost like they said: 'We're done playing with it, here you go'."

We all have become aware, during some point in our lives, somewhere between attending Seaworld in Queensland at twelve years old and becoming allies with the internet, that the innocent creature that we call a ‘dolphin’ is not as innocent as it seems – in fact, these creatures of the sea that you or someone you know has been photographed swimming with, can defeat ravenous sharks, defying a horrible fate of getting shredded by three sets of sharp teeth.

In fact, in a study by Mark Cotter, an Okeanis member, it was found that sexually frustrated male dolphins are more likely to kill for relief rather than for food. Porpoises, strange dolphin-like creatures with no nozzles, are the victims in these situations. While they swim around innocently, existing in seas and trying not to become extinct because of sexually frustrated distant relatives, they have become carcasses and play-toys. The dolphins in this particular study had chased the porpoises, viciously rammed into them, and had drowned them. In one crazy attack, seven dolphins ganged up on a porpoise, rammed it to death, and two were left behind playing with its carcass before offering it to the boat that Mark Cotter was on.

Twenty-one of the twenty-three attacking dolphins were male, which seemed to have played a substantial part in this killing spree mystery. Apparently, there is too much competition in the dolphin world, so to relieve their frustration, young male dolphins take on ganging up on porpoises. Perhaps dolphins have been eavesdropping on the subliminal messages found in rap music blaring on the boats of wealthy young men on hot summer nights. Perhaps one dolphin began a new trend, wherein being a dolphin gangster was cool, and perhaps that particular dolphin had a cousin who was a porpoise, and that porpoise had said that that idea was silly, so that dolphin rammed into him until he drowned, and began another new trend – silencing all porpoises in commemoration of that one porpoise that was silenced.

Perhaps whilst boating, a young man had taken with him and dropped by accident an issue of Playboy Magazine into the ocean, which had opened up the centerfold and was caught in a passing dolphin’s face, which inevitably led to the dolphin becoming overexcited, and upon looking for a rowdy female to share his excitement with, he was disappointed to find that the females were more interested in the older dolphins who were aroused by her and not human centrefolds, so that dolphin became very upset but was still excited, and his excitement turned into frustration and he beat up a porpoise who just so happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and in tradition, whenever young male dolphins feel sexually frustrated that was a decent thing to do.

While all of this is possible, though highly unlikely, it may be that maybe dolphins in general have a hatred for porpoises. Perhaps porpoises had teased dolphins for having a ‘bottlenose’, and dolphins have felt self-conscious about it ever since, to the extent that they ram into any porpoise on sight. Maybe porpoises are evil creatures that appear innocent only because they are getting massacred. Maybe us humans are interpreting the observations of these murders in the wrong way – maybe the porpoises taunt the dolphins, and the murderous dolphins just happened to be males because the females are too scared to deal with killing another living thing.

Dolphins are simply strange creatures. Though they appear fun, friendly and inviting, so do large beaten down vans with ‘free candy’ sprayed on the sides, and everyone knows that good does not come from large beaten down vans with ‘free candy’ sprayed on the sides. Consider from this moment on all dolphins to be like the aggressive Snorky from the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode number eleven. Consider also that flirtatious encounter from the dolphin ‘Stinky’ at the Cayman Islands: the dolphin becomes so sexually aroused by the divers that it begins to show – literally. At one stage, it attempts to pin a diver to the ground so that it can comfortably get on top of him.

If you ever encounter a dolphin, be sure to remain on a boat and not get anywhere near the water, so as to avoid involuntarily becoming a creator of a half-dolphin half-human hybrid, and if you see a porpoise minding its own business near a dolphin, tell it not to, and to swim away faster than Ian Thorpe.

Frantic Flying Beings

Whilst I sat there in the serenity of three o'clock in the morning in my study, I opened a new word document only to find that I had an unwelcome visitor. A large, frantic moth flew in at a rapid speed and began to bang its body furiously around the four walls that I had, prior to this drastic event, deemed my very sanctity.

This frantic being had invaded my very peace, and demanded I give it my undying attention by making vibrating noises with its wings so loud that it even woke my poor parrot. At that moment in time, one thing immediately found itself alerting my mind to take action - bug spray. I decided that with great haste, I would leave the study, shut the door and find the bug spray. And as if to challenge me, the moth had landed itself in a confronting manner on my bookshelf. It stared at me upside down, in an intimidating manner. I simply turned away, sealed the door shut, and made my way to the kitchen.

Alas, there was the bug spray - a shiny, glimmery golden aerosol can containing the very poison that would ensure this creature's very death and my very relief. I took it in my grasp - 'one hit kill', 'no odor' and 'kills' and 'moths' were amongst the other very promising things on the can. I held it in the right manner, in preparation of this human verses insect duel - my index finger on the comfortably molded plastic head on top and the rest of my hand's members gripped with adequate strength around the canister. I then headed back to the study, and opened the door slowly, keeping my sight on the last place I sighted the moth, and there it remained and patiently waited.

I creeped slowly in its direction, my hand holding the bug spray outstretched, pointing right at it. It did not move. It did not flinch. It sat there, seemingly awaiting its early demise. I pressed my index finger down on the cap, firmly, taking a step closer in the moth's direction each second that the poison was being sprayed. Unfortunately, the sound that the bug spray made when I pressed the cap down was faster than the speed of the poisonous mist, and the poisonous mist was no match for the moth and its reflex skills - or so it seemed. Slowly but surely, the moth was dying - or so it seemed. It was, rather, suffocating in the way an asthma victim would if they were on a fast merry-go-round. Now, rather than frantically hitting into the walls, the moth began to break dance - or so it seemed. It flapped itself all around the floor, unexpectedly taking a liking to remaining beneath my sister's computer chair, who is afraid of moths, and who, luckily, was sound asleep in her room.

I knew that that one spray was not yet enough to phone the grave digger of the insect world and inform them to dig another grave. So I aimed at the mouth everywhere it slowed its newfound dancing skills, and sprayed it some more. It really seemed to be challenging me. Six long sprays later, and three dance-offs, the moth lay perfectly dead on its back - or so it seemed. I spray it one last time to make sure it did not move, and it was dead - or so it seemed. I made my way outside to soothe my parrot back to sleep, and heard a vibrating sound coming from inside.

Could it be? I turned around, entered the study again, and looked in the corner where the supposed dead moth lay. It was on its feet again, flapping its wings whilst on the floor, facing the wood panel of my desk and head-butting it while it flapped, scraping itself along the wood, left to right. I stood there dazed, probably because of the so-called 'odorless' smell. I did not know what else I could do. Well, I did, but I did not want to do it.

My plan this time was to stop spraying bug spray - obviously, this moth is a strong contender. Instead, I planned to trap the moth beneath the steel bin I have under my desk. But I did not. I thought about underestimating the length in the area beneath the bin and thought about the disgusting feeling that would pulsate to my fingertips if the moth was crushed. I would not be able to handle the crunchy feeling. I decided instead to stand there and stare at it for a while longer. I then left the room, shut the door, and headed to my bedroom.

I have chosen to let the mouth take its fate into its own little hairy hands and antennae. I hope that when I wake up tomorrow, my sister does not slaughter me with deafening cries because of the fact that I let it die - or live - underneath her computer chair.

Baby on Board

“Oh my God, Shut up! Shut up! Enough!”

“Sir, I really don’t think that that is appropriate to say to my chil-“
“I’ve had enough! Oh my god, all the way!”

“Stop telling my child to shut up!”

“Stop telling me to shut up, and tell your child to shut up! You bloody stupid!”

Today, this was not a conversation I was merely eavesdropping on. It was not a conversation from a stranger. It was initiated by my father, who was infuriated with the constant loud crying of the chubby infant behind him on the flight back to Melbourne.

I had only thirty minutes of sleep, and the entire time that I was kept awake by the discomfort of the hotel bed and my mother’s snoring, I heard my father pacing the kitchen and living room, unable to sleep as well. The sleep that I acquired is barely what my father acquired too, so it is safe to say that we were quite on edge. The flight from Melbourne to Queensland bared the same crying infant, though he was perched beside someone in the start of the plane, and my father, seated with us at the back, said, “I feel sorry for whoever is sitting next to him.” The irony that the infant sat right behind my father was too much to cope in the duration of the flight.

Two whole hours – my mother had modeled a ship out of the vomit bag provided to her for the flight, to give to the infant in order to calm him down, however I told her that I would rather not see her breakfast than see it sprawled all over the innocent passenger sitting in front of her. She unfolded it, and returned it to her spot. The infant kept crying. Its mother did nothing in those entire two hours to soothe him, nor did the father. There were around five other infants on board, and their parents kept them quiet and entertained with ‘whooshing’ and other noises that planes make, and gestures. Unluckily for this baby, though, its parents begged to differ, and my father’s patience was running thinner.

And so, the burst of conversation above happened. Every passenger turned in our direction and tried to contain their laughter. My sister, mother and I certainly could not. My father was seated next to two good-looking young men, too, who he most likely had deafened in the miniature dispute. The flight attendants dared not comment, they simply hurried past, doing their jobs of checking the chairs and passenger bagging faster, to avoid an imaginary explosion of my father’s insides from pure anger.

The funniest thing about this entire ordeal was not the flight attendant’s reaction, nor mine nor my mother nor my sister’s nor anyone else on the plane, but the fact that the infant, after being screamed at to “shut up” actually had. In fact, after my dad had shook the plane with his voice more than turbulence, the infant had sat there with its eyes widened and mouth sealed shut. A Japanese man wearing white headphones seated across from me could not stop giggling to himself. Surely, my father had done what everyone else on the plane wished they had. It was an 8am flight, and nobody had time for a constantly wailing infant in the midst of turbulence.

The infant’s father, I predicted, was soon to fight with my father after the plane had landed. When it did, however, and my father stood from his seat, he overshadowed the infant’s father by height and by weight and by anger, so the infant’s father slumped back down in his chair slowly and acted as though the incident never occurred in the first place. In fact, I could have sworn he would have given his infant as a sacrificial meal to my infuriated father, had he been any bigger than he is.

That moment in time was certainly entertaining for me and all the plane passengers, except for that infant. Why is it that infants are allowed on flights? I only dared for less than a few seconds to imagine this situation on a flight that went for over twelve hours – in that event, I presume that my father would have catapulted the infant, its mother and father out of the entire plane with one breath.

Condensed Hours of Sleep

One may rest his weary head upon his trusty pillow,

Yet one needs to awaken early and tell the world 'hello'.

For if one has an early flight that he needs to catch,

He must win against sleep in the nightly match.

I have four hours of sleep. Tonight is not the only night that I have had condensed sleeping hours, yet tonight is the night where I actually need to wake up early the day after, which means that I need to abide by my condensed sleeping hours, so that I ensure myself not being the reason as to why my family misses its fight back to Melbourne.

This comes as unsatisfying news to me, as I am not only using my condensed hours of sleep to write this, but I also have to use some to continue reading the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - it is quite an addictive book, if I must say so, and it requires constant attention, which ultimately requires a lot of time, and time is something I am very short of tonight if I want to catch the plane tomorrow. What pains me is that in order to sleep, I need to write and post this, then to think about life and the souls I have met, and then read. It is only then that I can fall into a peaceful slumber.

And another problem arises - once I fall, I fall into a deep sleep. I am a deep sleeper, in fact so deep, that a marching band on full volume cannot shake me from my rest. My body wakes up when it feels discomfort in the position it is in, or when my bowls decide to, well, move. None of these will happen in four hours, because my bowls have no reason to move as of yet, and this bed I am sleeping on at the moment is uncomfortable all over, thus I think it is impossible for me to get to sleep in the first place.

I am scared if I fall asleep that my father will have to wake me. I should not worry about this in terms of its success in waking me up, because my father's voice has the, insofar, unproven ability to wake up the petrified Chinese warriors. My worries lie not in the fear of my dad failing to wake me, because that will never be the case because of how strong his inside voice is, but they lie in the fact that when or if I sleep, I will have to be woken by him. I will have to go through freezing and immediately thawing nerves, risking permanent damage in my reflex system.

Now, I have so many things to worry about that I probably will not get any sleep. I have promised myself a large, juicy can of RedBull energy drink tomorrow and a nap on the plane back, if I do not sleep. However, because tonight I am sharing a room with my mother, who is terrified of the movie Mama that we just saw - her second viewing of it, I probably will not enjoy her snoring, which has already started to tear at my very soul. It is no wonder that my father had so happily traded his bed for sleeping on the sofa. He is now able to comfortably sleep and sore to a James Bond movie, while I am cooped up with Snore-a-saurus Rose.

In the midst of this dilemma, my sister is asleep, sound asleep, in an atmosphere of peace, cool air and serenity in the comfortable double-bed I was sharing with her the last five nights here. I am the shortest in my family, and my feet are hanging off the tiny single bed I am laying on now. I feel as though I am the intrusive Goldilocks sleeping in the three bears' lair. I toss and turn in my sleep, and this bed likes to notify every family member in this resort about that.

Do not take your bed for granted the way I have. The best holiday is one where you can take your bed with you. And earmuffs. Big, fluffy, noise-reducing earmuffs.