Video games can be educational.

Whether you know it about me or not, I am into video games. Like the majority of men and an increasing portion of women in America, I enjoy sitting in front of a television screen and battling armadas of ridiculously oversized robots (or aliens, depending on your preference) with out-of-this-world weapons.

One of the games I like to engage in is called Psychonauts. This game can only be described as a "saturday morning cartoon for adults". Much like Pan's Labyrinth was "a fairy tale for adults" (if the comparison is lost, I'm sorry, it's all I've got). Its funny, irreverent and smart all at once. And what's more, it's fun. One of the things that the main character, Rasputin (or Raz for short) gets to do is travel telepathically into the brains of people who are having certain psychological problems. Mind you, pertinent to the game's plot.

In a particular level, you travel into the brain of an out-of-work actress named Gloria, who is wiling away the hours in the back yard of an insane asylum, giving a movie award acceptance speech to an audience consisting mainly of plants and rock in a greenhouse. Its inside her that you see a massively overweight acting critic sitting in the upper seats of an ornate playhouse.

The basic premise of this level is, by using a troupe of hap-hazard, talentless actors/actresses to act out portions of Gloria's life in order to get to the upper levels of the playhouse to take out the critic.

Ok. For those of you who have read this far, I applaud you. There is a point to this.

There is a voice, approximately somewhere in the vicinity of my left inner ear and corpus collossum (thats the inner part of your brain that acts as the bridge between both sides) that ruptures with what seems to be a mixture of sadness, hysterics and uncertainty. This is something, much like my fear of spiders and old houses, that I have dealt with nearly all my post-pubescent life.

Its the voice of that inner movie critic that doesn't like what he sees, and has made it his life's work at questioning every move and motion in my life. It is only through the act of doing, as well as not doing. Especially in the "not doing". I get into the realm of could-have-been and should-have-been.

I resolve to end this jibba jabba. I have before me a life that is full of opportunity and discoveries. I resolve to listen to only those voices that bring encouragement and praise. I resolve to take the negative voices as constructive criticism. I resolve to grow up. I resolve to take my responsibilities seriously. I resolve to work hard, regardless of my current mood.

Now that wasn't totally pointless.