« moving on | Main | the sad and the funny all tangled up together »
Friday, September 16, 2005
oh dear
Here is a short list of websites aimed at children where I (an adult in full possession of my faculties, last time I checked) can waste an inordinate amount of time without even trying*:
- Cyberchase (from PBS) rhythm patterns: JINGLY JANGLY CRACK is what this is. Not that I would know, never having tried crack, but with this -- game? not only do I find myself spending "just a few more minutes" trying to perfect an interesting rhythm -- I go around humming said rhythms all day long. Just what I need, something more to make people think I'm crazy.
- elouai Game Makers. Like paper dolls (and dollhouses), without the cleanup, or the little tabs that never stayed where they were supposed to.
- Crazy Libs. I've talked about these on here often. (Rinkworks also provides, for your amusement, Book-A-Minute, Movie-A-Minute, Computer Stupidities, and The Dialectizer, which enables you to translate text into jive, cockney, Swedish Chef, Redneck, and an assortment of other well-known dialects of English. Also it enables you to spew beverages onto your monitor, if you're nerdy like me. These sites, however, aren't necessarily aimed at kids, and hence they do not get their own list tags.)
- USA Geography Web Games, which I originally bookmarked for school use, but guess who spent days mousing and arrowing until she could get above 90% on level 9 (Cartographer), which -- you might think you know US geography, and you probably do, but if you need a little dose in humility, see how many tries it takes you before you can resize and rotate each state before putting it in its proper spot on a map WITH NO BORDER OUTLINES.
*The author of this website will not be held responsible for dusty houses, unfinished laundry, full inboxes, or actual job loss incurred as a result of time spent on the featured websites. Reader is responsible for formulating his/her own excuses for said lapses of responsibility.
Comments
81% on the Level 9 Cartographer on the first try. I had a hard time with what size they were supposed to be. Also I had Vermont upside-down and thought it was New Hampshire. :)
Posted by: mary at September 16, 2005 12:41 PM
OH I hold you FULLY responsible. I looked at your entry at around NOON. It is now THREE-SEVENTEEN! That first one is like a juvenile version of this game called Music Generator from Playstation 2. It was like crack. I had to give that whole game system up before I went retarded. The doll one took up most of my time...took me a bit to figure out the layering thingy...still not working for me THAT well. I did some crazy libs in a manner most befitting a fowl-mouthed little punk and LMAO. OH the humanity...What a wasted day. Thank you ;)
Posted by: jenn at September 16, 2005 03:19 PM
"The author of this website will not be held responsible for dusty houses, unfinished laundry, full inboxes, or actual job loss incurred as a result of time spent on the featured websites. Reader is responsible for formulating his/her own excuses for said lapses of responsibility."
No, It is your fault!!! =) ALL YOUR FAULT! I really love the computer stupidities!!!!
Posted by: debi at September 16, 2005 03:23 PM
Mary, you are a genius, that's all there is to it. I am not even going to TELL you what my score was on my first try, but I think it might have had a six in the tens place. Or the tenths place, maybe, strictly speaking. Anyway. Not so good. I can get 96% or a 98% with regularity now -- usually either a size will mess me up, or one of the NH/VT duo. I think I've scored 100 only once.
I also like the capitals game. That's actually what I was looking for when I found the site -- we had a states and caps game for our Atari 800 when I was little that I LOVED. Except we had to spell the whole city name, not just the first three letters. When we first had it, the only city we could think of in Idaho was Coeur d'Alene, where our cousins lived -- you should have seen me (at eight) and my brother (at ten) trying to spell that. It was humbling.
Jenn, C and her little friends would do the doll maker for HOURS (and, um, so can I. It's like the Yahoo Avatar thing on steroids) if I would let them. LT makes the home one -- the outdoors one -- into a war thing. The little girls with jump ropes? Have force fields. It is hard not to laugh.
Debi -- I also can spend a long, long time reading the many computer stupidities. :)
Posted by: Rachel at September 16, 2005 07:00 PM
