The day they installed children's games on the library computers was a dark day. No longer could I look forward to silence while I was at work; instead, I get to look forward to hearing the same voices say the same things over and over and over again. They used to be out with all the other computers but eventually got moved into the kids room, but it didn't matter; you can still hear Elmo loud and clear from the furthest point away from the computer. It's absolute torture. You might think it's not that bad, but really it is. I can't tell you how many times I have wanted to take a sledgehammer to those computers. It's not just the annoying voices and sound effects (although that is a major part of it), but it's mainly the repetition. In the span of one game, I can hear the same phrases and noises at least fifteen times. Now, multiply that by the dozens of kids who come in to play the game in the five or six hours that I'm working, and maybe you can start to see how this affects me. I had started writing this post a while ago, and in light of my last post this seems so irrelevant and part of me thinks, who the hell cares about this stuff anyway? But life goes on even when tragedy strikes and I'm trying to put the pieces back together and move on, and if it takes talking about annoying computer games to do that, then that's what's happening.
Elmo is the absolute worst invention ever in the history of children's characters, and this is coming from someone who thinks Jim Henson was a genius. But it's not just Elmo and his stupid voice. It's Dora the Explorer. And Spongebob Squarepants. And something called Reader Rabbit and the stupid mouse character that does all the activities. And the skeleton guy. Oh, that skeleton guy.
I'm not sure why it's not there anymore, but there used to be a game where you could have Green Eggs and Ham read to you, along with animations and various sound effects. That sounds amazing, right? WRONG. Don't misunderstand me, I absolutely love Dr. Seuss, and in particular Green Eggs and Ham, since that book is what taught me to read. But imagine a really obnoxious voice, one that overdramatizes. Every. Single. Word. And that's what Sam sounds like. Now imagine a grumpy old man voice, and you have the other character. Throw in annoying overdone cartoon sound effects and that's essentially the whole thing. It was enough to make me want to gouge out my eardrums.
Reader Rabbit might even be worse than that, though. I have no idea how the game got that name, because there is absolutely nothing there that teaches kids how to read. There are games where they color, do hand motions to certain songs, pop bubbles, do shape puzzles, but NOTHING involving reading. That really bothers me! And then I have to hear the Itsy Bitsy Spider eight times in a row, usually with the kid playing the game singing along. Badly.
Spongebob Squarepants used to be a show that I enjoyed watching, as stupid as it is. I never realized just how annoying he was until the game happened. First of all, it's a typing game, like Mavis Beacon, only with Spongebob and Patrick and Squidward. Kids who watch Spongebob don't understand what typing is or that the point of the game is to type things correctly. They just bash away at the keyboard, making bugs squish (with disgusting sound effects) all over the windshield. Mr. Krabs' voice, saying the same things over and over again: just awful.
Then there's the skeleton guy. I have the smallest problem with this game compard to the others because I'm partial to science and biology in particular, and this game teaches human anatomy. That's pretty cool, even if his voice is dreadful. But what really gets me? The alarm clock. I'm not sure why you have to wake him up for the game to start, but you do, and not only does it sound like the computer broke and is beeping in that "warning! warning!" kind of way; but it sounds just like the alarm clock I had when I was in high school and I get flashbacks of waking up at 5:30 in the morning and waiting for the bus in the cold...ugh.
And these games are just a smattering of what's available to play. There's a whole slew more of this junk that I get to hear on a daily basis. So there you have it: my slow but sure descent into Crazy Town. My eye is twitching just thinking about going to work tomorrow.
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