"Hey, for a mushroom, smash those bricks...with your head"

Today was a stream of randomness. Tuesdays I don't work til late and had somethings that I wanted to get done. Didn't. I proceeded to sleep in until noon, then went to Tucano's Brazilian Grill with Ty since he leaves tomorrow for home. Between the grilled pineapple and their tri-tip sirloin it is quite possibly the best food I have ever eaten and a religious experience ("If heaven is this good, I have got to get in").

I went over to Mindy and Brittany's house at like around 9-ish. After a brief stint at Super Empire Strikes Back on the Super Nintendo, I proceeded to play Super Mario Bros. 3 for several hours. Why did I play this side-scrolling, 1990 hit about the continued exploits of the two Italian-American plumbers, Luigi Mario and Mario Mario, as they fight the evils of Koopa-troopers through precision jumping, thrown fireballs, and the whipping of racoontails, while collecting mushrooms and other shrubbery for aid on this quest? (sorry that was a run-on) Especially while there are games, like Halo, FIFA Soccer 2004, and Thief: Deadly Shadows on my Xbox upstairs. In fact I even have Super Mario 3 on my Xbox. So again I ask the question: Why, Dustin, why? Simply put — girls

Men do stupid things for women. I think that is readily apparent to both genders. We spend money, We commit crimes, We fight wars, We turn on our closest friends and family, We play retro video games well into the night. For what purpose? For what greater good? It's what I like to call "the 1up." Its actually taken from an experience I had on around World 3 level 4 last night. On this level there is a secret extra life (a 1up), but it requires a risky, well-timed jump. Well, it turns out that A)I am not as skilled as I use to be at the precision jumping required in the Mario World and 2) I am doggedly stubborn. So I would smash the brick with my head and jump get the 1up and die. This process was repeated around 112 times (well it was more like 15 and then i got yelled at and was forced to stop but I totally would have kept doing it 97 more times). Did I feel bad, or that I had been wasting my time and energy? No, because everytime I got that 1up I felt a little tingle of joy and a breath of hope. I was willing to be shrunken, burnt by a fireball, or fall to my death into a great abyss for that 1up, for that promise of another attempt at the World, for another life.

Women are the same way. In the abstract we all see the silliness of it all, the same as we we do when we're Mario and we watch Luigi throw himself at that 1up over and over. But when you are in it, when you are facing the menacing mushrooms of World 2 Level 7, and you find that 1up, the hidden one that you have to turn the coins into bricks and use the racoon tail to fly up to, it becomes a focus; a neccessity. You could pass it up, but if you do you don't know when the next one will come along. And when you find a girl that captivates you, and gives you that tingle, you'll smash that brick with your head and jump off that platform if neccesary to get her (that is figurative, but I think I heard about a guy that did that, the smashing the bricks for a girl part). So what can I say, I'm a sucker for "the 1up"s. Paul summed it up in "Beautiful Girls":

"A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack & Coke all morning. She can make you feel high, full of the single greatest commodity known to man. Promise, the promise of a better day, the promise of a greater hope The promise of a new tomorrow...This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl; in her smile, and in her soul, and in the way she makes every rotten little thing about life, seem like its going to be okay."

"Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies." No, not even on World 3 Level 4.