I'm all about leaving things as they were. As anybody I've ever visited knows, I'm a low-impact guest to the point of annoyance. I always do the dishes, make the bed better than it was initially presented to me, and I refuse any and all offers that have anything to do with making my stay more comfortable. Nobody cleans up after me, because I make sure they don't have to.

This mindset has helped me immeasurably when it comes to being less of an embarrassment as a journalist -- at least less so than my meager training indicates I should be. I go in, ask around, record things, then organize them. The end-result is some kind of verbal conduit-product, one that bridges a moment in time and an audience that couldn't make it. If I do my job right, there's no piece or part of me at all in the story. It's as if I was never there.

And this is all why, I've finally realized, video games are not for me. I've had a PlayStation 2 for years now, as well as a dusty stack of jewel cases containing games that were played for about half an hour each. I never upgraded to the PS3, and had four different trial accounts with GameFly before I finally realized that it was a waste of money. For a long time I thought this was some sort of generational thing, but I didn't like video games when I was 16 either.