Metagaming has fucked my mind. This new breed of video game aims to focus the player on gameplay conventions, deconstructing them and leaving the player pondering over the whys and hows of the game design process. These gameplay conventions – which have evolved over the past few decades, since the days of Pong, bulbous joysticks, & text-based adventures – are the palette game designers draw from, they are the conceptual building blocks that the interactive arts are sculpted out of. And while many of these conventions can function to enrich the game-playing experience, there are certain wide-spread practices which undercut the true potential of interactive media, certain stale or lazy or harmful practices which have evolved over the medium’s short life.

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Do you enjoy erotic art film? Do you find yourself mysteriously attracted to men with gorgeous handwriting? Are you a sexually frustrated young Japanese woman who can’t find that special someone that really gets your juices flowing? Have you considered partaking in bizarre erotic rituals which combine the lust for the word with the lust for the flesh? Well, then you’re in for a treat because Peter Greenaway has made a film just for you! In The Pillow Book, Nagiko (played by Vivian Wu), has totally been there before: only experienced calligraphers can fulfill her sexual desires, and she’s tried quite a few, instructing them in how to weave their delicate art around every curve and crevice of her body. Ewan McGregor plays Jerome, the English translator who becomes Nagiko’s favorite lover, and he provides the perfect canvas for Nagiko’s literary compositions; it’s like a wonderful performance art piece as a naked, word-decorated McGregor parades his viscera for his male lover, an elderly Japanese publisher. Now, as you might have guessed, this film might not go over too well for people who are easily made uncomfortable – the beautifully vivid imagery, the hypnotic tone, and the slow menacing pace all make for a disquieting, disorienting, and (at times) disturbing experience. But if you’re the more adventurous type, or the idea of Japanese calligraphy on naked bodies sounds like something that you could really get into, then don’t miss The Pillow Book.

Adderall and other attention deficit medications and disorders are merely modern man’s way of understanding and dealing with the higher demand on attention. In this age of New Media there is a necessity to split up one’s concentration far beyond the limits it was originally intended to be. The only way of coping is to take concentration-enhancing drugs which allow one to fully capture his/her potential. Those with minds less affected by the stresses and taxation of New Media on concentration – because of their non-immersion in (or fear of) future technologies – are the ones who are most successful without medication. However, as the ubiquity of technology exponentially increases the potential for the success of the non-immersed will continue to plummet unforgivingly. The coming generations are going to need super-human concentration in order to progress in this world where we are bombarded by enormous excesses of information during every waking moment.
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