Pacman

Catching up on Lost (so far not impressed with this ho hum final season), finally taking out the pile of recycling that was ivy-like in it's ascent up my living room wall, and now blogging about what has been taking up WAY too much of my thought and time today (and yesterday). I rediscovered the "fun" tab on my Google home page, which includes a Pacman app. I'm a fan of the arcade game (though mostly of the MS. Pacman), but today took the appreciation to a new level.

I was working out of our Tacoma office and (on a break, of course) played a game of Pacman when I started to think of how awesome I was at it. These thoughts merged with some paranoid theories about whether the different colored ghosts (or "Ghost Monsters") had different personalities/strengths/strategies and prompted me to do some Google searches. I not only found that there was a bizarre-sounding and short-lived Pacman cartoon in the 80s, but also (and somewhat more interestingly) a rather intense and impressive history of Pacman players.

I guess I had always thought I was a pretty amazing Pacman player myself and thought I must not be TOO far from "beating" the game. Little did I know that Pacman actually has over 250 levels (I've beaten maybe 10 or 11 in my best games) including a legendary "split-level" (a weird garbled mess of a level) that appears to be endless (or unbeatable). Since 1999, seven people have achieved the feat of a "perfect game" in Pacman, in which the top score is something over 3 million. (One of these guys was actually from Beavercreek, OH!) Anyway, dejected and ashamed, I now acknowledge that I am not a very strong Pacman contender, but it has inspired me to take my Pacman training more seriously.

Bring it.