Thursday, May 29, 2008

Lara Croft ..my hero(ine)?

So, I was asked the other day if I had a role model or hero/ine and I said Kelly Holmes. Now I picked her because there she was, the person who always came second, the person who was forever picking up injuries and having to get over it. In short, she just stuck to it all – stubbornness, determination, grit, call it what you will, she just got on with it. In the end, lots of hard work and she comes home with a double gold medal that she plainly was delighted to get. I shall never forget her face after she went over the line, pointing at herself and going me? Me? Did I win? Me?

Anyway, all of that about Kelly is true, but in fact I think my real heroine is Lara Croft…. (although I know I shouldn’t really admit it) Now obviously, what woman wouldn’t like their breasts to point out and up like that without the merest hint of any scaffolding*1, but what that girl can do, hey, it’s mad. We had the (mis?)fortune to buy an Xbox 360 at Christmas and someone gave me a Lara Croft game. Suddenly I am able to run and shoot at the same time, leap from pole to pole and swing my way across ropes and along narrow mountain ledges. I am a dragon killer and an acrobat, a dead eye dick and a puzzle solver extraordinaire. What a girl eh? (me of course, not her plainly). I even killed the a T Rex the other day!

The Xbox is the biggest time waster in the world and one of the most relaxing things I have ever owned. I find myself immersed, regardless of whether it’s a driving game*2, Lara Croft or something to do with aeroplanes (which I can’t fly, I can only crash into the ground in many spectacularly different ways). For me it is a guilt free timewaster as I don’t have the time to think “oh I should be doing the ironing” when I’m approaching the next corner at 80 miles an hour, or where Lara is balanced precariously on a pole and needs to get across a chasm filled with tigers.

Great stuff – so thanks BMB for getting me into it.

At this point, you find out where the mis bit comes in the (mis) fortune, as although it's a fine distraction, should I really have this guilt free attitude towards it?


*1 I can imagine that thousands of teenage boys across the world are there, zooming the camera right up close and getting their first taste of growing up…..only to find out later that real girls just ain’t like that!
*2 I will own up to being a real fiend on Colin McRae’s Dirt – possibly the best driving game in the world ever....actually, there’s no possibly about it. If Carlsberg did driving games, that’s the one they’d do! Um, and yes, I am a fiend...I do know where the brakes are, but that's just thoeretical really....


BTW, the second link has nothing to do with driving or anything, I just thought it was a great ad!

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