yakalskovich | What makes me uneasy about FarmVille

What makes me uneasy about FarmVille is not that it's eaten the Nazgul's brain at the moment; worse brain-eatages have occurred, for example when I first discovered the old Discworld RPG back in 2004. The crack that is RPing (in contrast to the more sedate and ponderous nose-powder that is fanfic) so totally took me in for a while, I even did set alarms for it, and that seems to be an alarm sign.

It's not that Zynga, the company that makes it, is probably quite evil, and Facebook definitely is.

It's that there are no seasons!

You can plant whatever whenever you want to. There is no lambing season, no sowing in spring, no asparagus that stops on June 24th latest, no cabbage for winter, no St. Martin's geese, no blackberries belonging to the devil after October 31st...

Okay, making people wait for a result for a year would be counter-productive. But why not set random shorter season? Why not allow sheep tupping only on a Friday, and the sowing of certain crops only during the first week of the month, and so on? What makes real farming in real life what it is is seasons, and FarmVille totally eliminated that.

We first world people are used to having strawberries and tomatoes in the supermarket all the time, to mushrooms all year round, to green beans flown in from Egypt in winter, and to fresh flowers from Nigeria at Christmas. The globalised world is ignoring the seasons, so why should FarmVille reintroduce them? FarmVille farmers don't really want to keep up all night in the lambing shed at the dead of winter; they don't want to harvest a surfeit of cherries that they don't know what to do with, or do nothing between waking and sleeping but pluck apples and make cider in autumn. They don't want to race a thunderstorm for the wheat harvest, or pull a calf out by the feet. It's sanitised agriculture with purple cows.

There would be nothing wrong with it -- it is a game! -- except that it suggests to million of city dwellers that farming is a sanitary, fun business that brings forth bounty without season, without dirt, without suffering.

And that's demeaning to everything mankind did since the neolithic revolution.-

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Buying organic is problematic because any time money is involved, sellers will find ways to manipulate the rules.

Here, we have locally grown produce/beef/eggs. You have to seek it, but the farmers' markets are there.

Yep, we have that, too. A small weekly market down the road around the corner on a Tuesday.

When I lived in Russia, I remember the smell of the rotting meat in the summer sun. *gagging*

Eurgh!

Nah, the weekly market here has trucks with refrigeration.-

I loved the Helsinki markets because all of the meat vendors were refrigerated.

And the food was sumptuous!

But I loved Germany, too. I lived in Walsrode (outside of Hannover) and everything there was fresh by definition. :)

Oh, there are those market halls in Helsinki! And then there are seasonal events when all the fishing boats come in and sell things from shipboard on the harbour wall.

And then the open markets. And the flea markets. And...

Yes! The market halls down on the waterfront.

Oh, you've been! I had my favorite fish vendor, my favorite beef vendor, my favorite chicken vendor.

Even my favorite olive vendor!

The Russians used to have an amazing flea market -- I think to the north of the city? (We had to take the tram to get there)

Oh yes, that is not far from where one of my friends lives, in Hietalahti.

I love Finland! I could happily retire there.

Me too!! And never leave again.

My friends have a summer home in Puumala with no electricity, no running water, nichts. One literally has to do everything by hand -- washing plates in the river, etc -- and then use lanterns at night.

That experience was hands-down one of the highlights of the year I lived there.

Oh yes -- those summer houses rule!

I want one of those!

And a town house in Helsinki (I lived on Vironkatu, right in the heart of the city!).

A flat somewhere in Helsinki, with one of those creaking ancient elevators in the staircase!

Oh I love those hissi!!

Until I saw Eva Green die in James Bond...

With the one difference that the water is about three feet deep there in Venice. No building could ever sink in it. You'd end up in the middle of a tremendous pile of rubble.

Tell that to Vesper.

yakalskovich is just demonstrating the principle of "brilliant out-there show-runners and demanding, emotionally invested fen actually call forth and inspire each other," rewriting the end of the last Bond both realistically and happily (thereby erasing all the future ie. older Bond films?) ;=

:D

Hmmmmm, a return to happy James Bond.

I can't even imagine it.

Nope. That was the good thing, or one of the good things, about the new pilot. Happy Bond would have to be "Die Zwei".

I just want Daniel Craig and Judi Dench forever.

Yeah. I loved that pilot so very much ... after the secodn I worried and still worry if they won't keep it up. There was a Craigwithgun cover on my ex-magazine but it didn't look Bondy.

I love Daniel Craig in anything he does (he's going to be in the English "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and may I just say I already love it!).

I even swooned in Golden Compass.

Yeah, I always did. So far his "potatoe face" seems to have survived the fame - he's been liased with every pretty young actress before then already, although paired with my dearest Rachel Weisz, that is one dream team - hate that these film couples always fail. Also tumblr can turn me off any actor with its "OMG HE S SO PERFECT -> I LOVE HIM"

That was a great movie, so of course everyone else thought it was shit. I had seen it in the theatre first, most impressive. I so wished for sequels - as with A Series of U. E. - see, doomed, if I like it, individually, it's not enough against the masses ;P