Word of the Day: abstruse

I don’t know about you all, but this has been a very odd week, and the weather isn’t the weird part. Today the high was in the mid 60s, and tonight we have a winter storm watch, and could even have a snow day, which really is Colorado in March. Even weirder, I’m not entirely sure I want to have a snow day tomorrow, since I’ve got to wrap up a huge project by tomorrow afternoon, after I already did it once. So, regardless of the weather, that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow.

Discombobulation of the time change and other challenges of the week aside, I hope your week has been ok.

Today’s Word:

abstruse

As in:

When Fred Barton, tax man, purchased Rock Band for his Play Station 3, little did he know it would change not only his life, but the lives of his 3 best friends.

The old gang of friends started meeting weekly to play the game, and soon, it was all they thought about, and all they cared to think about. Soon all of them had mastered their roles, Max on drums, Kenny on lead guitar, Marvin rocking the bass, and Fred took the role of front man, owing to the fact that it was his game, and he spent some time in the church choir, so, he was more likely to find the melody and maintain his pitch.

After Marvin lost his job as a baker, because the late nights “rocking out” with the band made it impossible to get up in time to make the donuts, the band made a crucial decision: they would all quit their jobs, and become a real rock band.

The first part of the plan was to trade in their game controllers for actual instruments. Kenny especially noted that playing a read guitar was “way harder” than it looked, and he was sure that after achieving maximum scores on all the expert levels, he’d be a few days away from international superstar. “I thought it would be a cinch to translate my *awesomeness* to the real thing. Turns out, it’s sorta hard.” Kenny found it exceptionally abstruce that his video game prowess didn’t directly translate to the real thing. He says he was misled by the video game industry as a whole. “You always see on the TV that kids learn how to shoot from violent video games, and then they do tons of damage shooting up their schools, so, I figured, this would be exactly the same.”

After a few months of dedicated full-time work, the band felt they were finally ready for a three-song set. Feeling more confident after selling out the venue at the local Pup ‘N’ Taco, they set up to entertain the standing room only crowd.

The crowd seemed more confused than amused, but, the band was not giving up. While Marvin noted “it’s much harder to know how well we’re doing without a screen flashing feedback, but, I think it was pretty cool. We all finished at the same time and everything.”

Max noted, “I really had to guess when to put it into ‘Overdrive.’ I think I did okay, but, since “Believe It or Not” (aka the theme song to “The Greatest American Hero”) is not available for Rock Band, so, I had to guess where it should be used.”

The band is thinking about going on tour, but, they’re still thinking of a name. Fred felt pretty sure that Marvin’s original idea of calling the group the PS3Ps (Playstation Three Players) would get into a copyright battle with Sony, which would pretty much end all their plans.

The band agrees that before the do go on tour, they might need to start writing some original songs, or try more than three chords. They tried “Believe It Or Not,” because it added the challenge of adding a few extra chords on the chorus, which made for a challenge, but, Marvin figures his first song writing attempt, a song he called “Satan Hates My Fax Machine,” probably needs work. He glumly admittedĀ  the song “lacked a good hook, and the lyrics were sorta crappy.”

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I’m going to make a shameful geekly admission here, and say I’ve never played Rock Band myself. I’ve seen people play it though. Does that count?

abstruse / ab – STROOSE / difficult to comprehend