Across and Inside my Universe

Bedroom Progress - Ribbons, Heroclix, Pandemic, & Neopets

Well isn't that an eclectic title!

One of my craft materials that needs much better organization are my ribbons.

So, I spent a few minutes pinning a whole variety of ideas to a pinboard for these ideas, on Pinterest.  Some are similar to each other, but there's some quite clever ideas in there.

See, I've realized that it's difficult or impossible to fully clean up the floor, without having somewhere in, on, amongst the cubes, shelves, and other parts of my craft organization "system", to put things that go there. 

Of course, if I don't have a place to put stuff after weeding, it's hard to settle on exactly what storage will work best, because I'm not sure what "space" it will "live in" once it's weeded and sorted . . . this is part of the problem in tackling this project, it feels like everything I do depends on doing something else that needs to be done, etcetera.

I'm not going to spend any $$ on anything organizational-wise until I have a better idea of what might go where.

AHHHhhhhh.  It feels like I'm stuck in a black hole, a vortex of doom.  What I need to remember is that's magnifying, that's catastrophizing, and if I take small moves, I can get this done.  No, thinking of getting it "done" is too much for me; I can make PROGRESS.  That is all I can think of.  Small moves = progress.

On the getting rid of my old Heroclix game figures front, I traded 2/3 of them with a fellow on Boardgamegeek.com for $80 worth of games that we wanted, and two that I wanted to try that take up no more space than a couple of envelopes (if I don't like them, they can be traded off just like the Heroclix): Pandemic, it's expansion On The Brink, and Alamo & Battle of 4 Armies.  These take up 1/4 of the space the Heroclix did.  If I can't find a trader for the balance of my Heroclix, then out they go, in the trash.

You can have BGG.com search for people who want in trade the games you have up for trade, while it also considers if they have up for trade games that you want in trade.  It's quite nifty, really.

On the Neopets front, we have some fond memories of the couple years my daughter spent on their site; we participated fully with her, as at that age we did not want her involved in anything on the internet without us.  We collected quite a few stuffed Neopets during that time, the bulk of which have been sitting in our bedroom in large bags for a couple years now.  All three of us collected; we each had our favorites.

Here are all the neopets we had, on my messy bed:

 

There are several PILES of neopets, 3 deep on there, so there's more than what you see.  On a queen-size bed. 

We weeded through our collection, with my husband keeping only a couple of Bruces; I kept the Shoyrus, the Flotsams, and one or two misc. others.  My daughter got rid of about 40% of her collection; not as much as I'd hoped, but enough.  Most of these Neopets, aside from my daughters, had been kept in a bag for their stay at our apartment; even out of hers, only two need cleaned.   Off to the thrift store with them.

What my spouse and I kept:

 

While it's embarassing to admit that we like Neopets; we're adults, after all, but they represent an age and time in my daughter's life that we all have fond memories of.  The ones we chose to keep also reflect our personalities; I like dolphins & strawberries, and the Shoyrus seem to be pleading to be loved.

What all three of us got rid of: 

 

Another stigmatizing board game

DeathMatch Asylum

Description of the game:

You’re a patient in a mental hospital. You awaken one morning to discover that all of the doctors and nurses are missing! This means that A) your control mechanisms are missing, and B) you’re low on medication. You do the obvious thing of course, you grab the nearest high-powered weapon and lay into your fellow inmates with a passion!

DeathMatch Asylum(tm) is a miniatures game / board game that simulates the multi-player first person shooter computer games. Play is fast-paced and humorous, and it’s a snap to learn!

I know this appeals to a juvenile male mentality, and setting seems to matter little to that demographic quite often, but this is really quite awful. This is a GAME?

Of course, I'm sure there's been bloody video games set in sanitariums and the like, but I don't think that makes it socially acceptable. The stigma associated with mental illness, especially with anything perceived to be related to "insanity", including hallucinations, etc., seems to make this seem even like a FUN setting for such a game, to some people.

If mental illness were truly seen as equal to other illnesses, well, then we'd either have people setting first person shooter games in cancer wards, or they'd set nothing violent against or by the patients there in either case.

The fact that people would be horrified if they made a game like the above, if it'd be set in a cancer ward, but not for a "mental" ward, well, it shows that we've got a long way to go in reducing and eliminating stigma for mental illnesses.

I could go on and on but here is a Geeklist on Board Game Geek.com of "insane" games; ie, they involve mental illness in some way. Some are rather offensive. Others seem to be "mad" because they are based on Mad Magazine. I haven't checked any out, just scrolled through and saw some horribly offensive ones.

http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/1230/item/19573#item19573