A (VERY) nice bottle of champagne, and a delightful afternoon with some of my fellow nursing student friends was a great ending to a hellish summer semester. We all deserved it, and I had a blast yesterday! Now, a couple of weeks of R&R, and I want to knock these other two semesters out of the park as well. I’m well on my way!!

Sample dialogue:

• “Some people learn to dance. Others are born to.”
• “People dance because dance can change things. One move can bring people together. One move can make you believe like you’re something more. One move (dramatic pause) can set a whole generation free.”

Starring the devil spawn of Jane “Sassy” Pratt and famed twink photographer Bruce Webber:The inspiration:

Angela Lansbury as Sarah Palin

**Commenters, take this post for what it is — yet another warning to sober conservatives that it’s time to spray for dipshits. This self-inflicted numbskullery does the GOP no favors.

The Iowa Republican Party recently approved its platform that includes a call for “the reintroduction and ratification of the original 13th Amendment, not the 13th amendment in today’s Constitution.”

While the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the GOP’s motives are not racial. It’s all about embarrassing Obama. Here’s the part of the original 13th amendment Iowa Republicans want restored to the Consitution:

“If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them.”

Like, say, a Nobel Prize? (Or is this just more nativist bullshit?)

Granted, platforms are typically irrelevant as far as policy goes but they reveal much about who holds influence within the party.

In better news, the little one sprouted her first tooth! She has been fussy and whiny for many weeks, drooling, and grabbing at her gums. Then we had the pure joy of night wakings and refusing to go back to sleep. I was started to get desperate, but then I finally saw that little tooth poke out and at least there was a reason for all of this nonsense. Now we get to go through this again for each one of the rest of her teeth – whee! She’s also learned how to use said tooth (ouch) and brushing her one tooth is pretty funny.

Poor little bit. She has no idea that these stupid things are only going to be trouble.

Yep. Hers have a touch of blue on the inside. very stylish. Very hip. Very 8th grade.

I said it...8th grade. She is queen of the playground this year. Next year she will be (vegetarian)lunch meat. Freshman. Bottom of the barrel. Wanna buy a pool pass/elevator pass/executive parking pass. But this year, this year she is on top. She's SELLING pool/elevator/executive bus riding (too young to drive) passes. BPOC! Big Princess On Campus.

BPOC...rocking the Apple Bottom frames. Oh yeah Be-yot-ches!

For the truly uninitiated who may have never even played a tabletop or MMO(RPG), here’s a brief video as a reference point to LARPs:

I’m fairly certain that clip inspired a good portion of the movie Role Models, but I can’t be totally sure.

Most of us probably don’t have the extemporaneous acting skills, free time or foam weaponry fabrication (smithing?) skills to participate in a LARP session but we love playing casual games on our phones and on Facebook.

A couple of posts this week by Jeff Hilimire and Thomas Strickland – mainly on the topics of location-awareness and technology’s place in place-based transactions got me thinking along a parallel path: gaming.

One of the hallmarks of most of the current crop of time-wasters (everything from check-in apps of various stripes, to FarmVille to even Twitter itself) are achievements. They take many forms: badges, buttons, mayorships, stars and even virtual goods and cash. But they share the feature of rewarding certain behaviors and actions with the acquisition of “flair” no matter how fleeting or ephemeral.

This idea of “the gameification of everything” has been rolling around in my head for months, since I first saw Kottke’s blog post, saw Jesse Schell’s DICE talk and heard about Jane McGonigal’s “SuperBetter” post-concussion ARG.

Here’s a recent video of a talk Jane gave in RE: SuperBetter:

These things may not seem related to why (or why not) technologies like Twitter or Foursquare or GetGlue ultimately survive, but they definitely have taught me that, as social animals, one need we have that exists right alongside this pure need to be social and share, is a desire to play, to have fun and to be rewarded in some way for our accomplishments. It starts with “tag” and moves to chess and now it’s XBOX Live and – some would argue – things like Gowalla and Miso.

But what I would argue (finally!) that “stand alone” experiences will never go away because, although most of the current crop of apps are about the “social”, you have to consider the personal, singular effects that these experiences have on the users/players who interact with them.

Do I think Foursquare will be around in 2 years? No.
Do I think Twitter will be around in 5 years? No.
Do I think Farmville will be around in 10 years? Yes.

Games are different and the introduction of game mechanics (and game-like risks & rewards) changes the math of what I’d think of as purely “social media” implementations.

What I’m most interested in (currently) are alternate reality games, social games and game-like constructs that help educate, inform and get things done. Two excellent examples, the upcoming Epic Win App and the Chore Wars RPG. The former is a GTD app/game for smartphones and the latter is an RPG framework for familial household duties. Fun AND good for you!

It’s these kinds of experiences – fun first – that I think point the way for future endeavors. You’ll always have loyalty-card-like systems (WeReward, Foursquare) but how about a “game” that gives me credit/points/something for calling my brother or working out regularly or giving an awesome presentation. One could argue that there are already portions of this functionality in other apps, but maybe I’ve just argued myself back around to this concept of pervasiveness that Jeff & Thomas put much more eloquently than I have thus far.

And while I think some if not most of the social technology and sites we have today will be gone in the near future, I think games/gaming are here to stay. The rub will be how does an activity I take in a game affect the real world? Donations to Haiti via Farmville is one way. Or how does an action I take upon entering a store or making a purchase or doing something here and now affect the game world on a server in China?

In the end, my post title is pretty meaningless given the current state of LARPs and ARGs. What I want is a better world (ha!) where I can snap a picture of the building I’m in or a QR code to update my game status for points that influence my fitness regimen or my diet and that tie back in to my game console, my TV and my running shoes. Like PerplexCity if had been played via phones. Or something like that. Maybe even like UGA’s Personal Media / Public Good projects.

It’s late and I’ve rambled on long enough. My ultimately-buried lede: while passivity is the logical outcome for all things social, active participation and outright gaming also have a long history and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon The fun begins when the games activate socially and the social activity you take without thinking about it affects your game.

Game on!

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Absolutely fantastic.

F